POLITICS OF LSA
h Rt 0 t11;il
Eighty-Four Years of Editorial Freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
) Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104
News Phone: 764-0552
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1974
humb fractures Nixon shell
PRESIDENT NIXON suffered a severe
blow to his political midsection Tues-
day as another Republican bit the dust
in another special Congressional elec-
tion.
Democrat J. Robert Traxler defeated
GOP officeseeker James Sparling in a bid
for the Eighth Congressional District seat
vacated by James Harvey, the Republican
who resigned to accept a federal judge-
ship.
It was the second defeat the GOP has
suffered in Michigan this year in special
elections, the first being Democrat Rich-.
ard Vander Veen's stunning upset win
over Republican Robert Vander Laan.
The two districts had both been solid
GOP strongholds prior to the advent of
of Nixon's Watergate troubles. A Demo-
crat had not won the Eighth. since 1932
and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
But the Eighth was peculiar in that
Nixon chose to make his stand there -
and the electorate revolted just as
strongly as the Sioux Indians came down
on General Custer.
IN NORMAL TIMES, this election would
have been a normal, run-of-the-mill
race - not too exciting, with little pub-
licity and a small voter turnout.
- But these are not normal times.
A beleagured President fighting for his
own survival came to the district at the
invitation of Sparling. Thus did a special
election in the sleepy, rural area of Mich-
igan's,"Thumb" turn into a mini-referen-
dum on the Watergate-tainted adminis-
tration of Richard Nixon.
Nixon stumped in the Thumb for Spar-
ling with a media army sniffing on his
TODAY'S STAFF:
News: Cindy Hill, Rob Meachum, C h i p
Sinclair, Jeff Sorensen, Sue Stephenson,
Becky Warner
Editorial Page: Mornie Heyn
Arts Page: Ken Fink, Jeff Sorensen
Photo Technicicn: Tom Gottlieb, Pauline
Lubens
trail, and datelines such as "Bad Axe,
Mich." were splashed on front pages
across the country. Columnists predicted
this election could be the undoing of
Richard Nixon if Sparling lost, for an-
other defeat could cause Republicans to
defect from the already shaky presiden-
tial fold. Traxler himself admitted he was
scared to have the entire political clout
of the president thrown against him.
But the clout proved to be weaker than
originally thought. The mere spectre of
the president does not carry the weight
it once used to.
THE STORY WAS ALL there on Tues-
day in the returns. Traxler carried
territory thought to be completely in the
grip of Republicanism. Sparling could not
even carry his home town of Saginaw-
a sure sign that a politician is in deep
trouble.
The impeachment process will now see
a speeding up. Republicans know they
are in deep trouble if the "Nixon prob-
lem" is not resolved before the Novem-
ber elections. This kind of defeat, on top
of the others, is enough to send GOP
politicos in the House scurrying for cover,
and coming out long enough to cast a
vote to send the whole mess to the Sen-
ate for trial. The image of Nixon in the
dock, facing charges that could send him
from office in disgrace, becomes sharper.
"If anybody -lost this election, It was
Jim Sparling," the defeated candidate
said.
But nobody who read those returns
and saw that election can believe that.
Sparling ran by proxy for Richard Nixon
and lost. Nixon gambled and lost in a
race he entered both politically and per-
sonally. He must now turn to face the
music as played by the Congressional
orchestra.
FOR, DESPITE "all the king's horses
and all the king's men," Richard
Milhous Nixon, like Humpty Dumpty,
has cracked far beyond repair and can-
not be put back together.
-GARY THOMAS
Model
By JOHN LANDE
and MARNIE HEYN
N THE PAST two weeks we have tried
.to describe the College of Literature,
Science and the Arts as we have come to
see it in the past several years. We would
prefer to see this College primarily as a
structure based on human values like mu-
tual respect, justice and responsibility. We
would like to see the College based on the
following four principles:
M u t u a l Interdependence. E v e r y
structure and person in the College is v e-
cessarily dependent on other structures and
people within the College. This College
could not function without workers, stu-
dents, faculty or administrators.
Legitimate differences of i n t e r e s ts.
Workers are interested in receiving fair
compensation for their labor. Students are
interested in acquiring skills and exper-
ience for personal fulfillment. Faculty are
interested in developing new technologies,
methodologies and aesthetics. Administra-
tors are interested in insuring the mainten-
ance of the College. Each different role
group has different legitimate claims on
the College which will inevitably conflict.
Just reconciliation of c o n f l i c t s.
Considering that conflicts will inevitably
arise over distribution of resources, con-
flicting claims should be settled equitably
and fairly.
Mutual responsibility. The j u s t
resolution of conflicts depends on people in
each role recognizing the mutual inter-
dependence of roles and people, the legi-
timately conflicting interests of various rol-
es and people and the need for equitable
resolution of conflicts and act accordingly.
THIS MODEL suggests a decision making
structure and process that equitably reflects
the interests of affected individuals. The
advice of experts is sought and usedas
deemed necessary and valuable by the af-
fected individuals.
This clearly is an ideal model of the
College as many of the ideas and sugges-
tions in this series of articles have been
ideal, i.e., we do not necessarily expect
that they might ever come about. We have
put forth this model as an ideal to strive
for, recognizing that while it might never
be fully realized, any significant change
in this direction would be worthwhile.
PERSPECTIVE OF POWER
Political power is intangible. It exists pri-
marily in our expectations of the outcomes
of possible actions. We suggest you view
political influence as changing others' ex-
pectations of the probabilities of your fu-
ture actions and their outcomes.
for
Most people form their expectations of
future actions in terms, of extrapolations of
recent history. As many students in this
College have not been active in the affairs
of this College recently, the College has
come to expect that students will not be
active in the future and make their plans
accordingly (cf. the University and the tui-
tion and dorm rate increases). This could
not have happened in 1968.
This would suggest that you should try
to influence the College by creating a his-
tory of serious and effective action. (This
is one important reason to win the faculty
salary disclosure issue). This would sug-
gest that it is important to contest issues
that you realistically expect to lose to
make the College understand that it will
have to recognize you and deal with you
in the future.
If you perceive political power simply in
terms of winning or losing isolated issues,
you will certainly be discouragedrand not
take full advantage of your prower.
Once you become awarethat you and
your role-group (in this case students) are
indeed powerful, you should learn to use
your newfound power carefully. You should
try to accomplish your goals using the
smallest amount of clout necessary. This
is important not only to conserve power (be-
cause it, too, is limited) but also to enhance
your power - i.e., you brought about
change using only a small amount of pow-
er. This is also important because it will
create an expectation of further action -
and that is more power.
Unless you are all powerful, you will
come to a point where you will be faced
with the choice of compromising some of
your ideals for concessions or not. To de-
cide, you must weigh the benefits and the
costs.
If you choose to compromise, it is im-
portant that the process as well as the sub-
stance of the compromise be made public.
It is through an understanding of the pro-
cess of compromise that you can under-
stand the dimensions of your power - and
this understanding itself is power. That is
why secret decision making robs you of
your power.
PERSPECTIVE OF SIZE
Many people are discouraged when they
face a large problem. They perceive it as
too large to solve and decide to ignore it
entirely in favor of smaller, easier-to-solve
problems. Unfortunately this has the ef-
fect of enlarging the already awesome prob-
lem by creating the expectation of the
offending interests that the more they
trample your rights, the less you will re-
act; this is encouraging them to do further
damage.
a
goodC
Many students look at the College, as
many citizens look at the country, as be-
ing too large and too bad to even try to
improve. It is that attitude, in the inaction
it justifies, that is encouraging the College
to continue anti-student policies.
If you are really interested in significant
improvement, tackle the big problems, with
an understanding of your power and know-
ing that you should not actually expect
complete satisfaction of your interests.
Boycotts
Many people believe that in order to be
effective, a boycott must be total and use
this rationalization to not exercise their
economic power. This is truly unfortunate
because even small boycotts can be ef-
fective.
Because of relatively high fixed costs in
most units (departments have to pay their
staff regardless of whether they generate
student revenues), a IS per cent effective
boycott would cripple most units and a 30
per cent effective boycott could entirely
devastate most units..
If you would like to boycott a department
or the College (by taking some of the 12
hours permitted in a BA/BS program or the
20 hours permitted in a BGS program,
in another school or college within the
University) you do not have to boycott 2e-
quired courses to be effective. Simply
choose your electives carefully.
Size of Groups
Many people believe that they individ-
ually cannot influence the College and
perhaps they would be right if they were
the only person in the College. There are
16,000 students in this College. If even
a relatively few of us perceive common
problems and act individually thetCollege
will feel the effects. Now that the Col-
lege is suffering financial problems, even
smaller actions can produce change.
PERSPECTIVE OF ACTION
Be aware that your actions and inactions
o llege
affect not just you in role of student but
also other students. You should understand
that improvement of the College should
be a co-operative effort of students. Clearly
no one set of students can deal with all the
College's problems. We hope that you will
try to act on one or two issues as you feel
they are important, and other students will
act on other issues; in this way most of
the serious problems can be dealt with.
Most institutions operate on the principles
of inertia and along the lines of least re-
sistance. This would suggest that in order
to be effective you may have to be persist-
ent both to overcome the incredible insti-
tutional inertia and to make it easier for
the institution to act in your interests than
to not act.
PERSPECTIVE OF SOME
COLLEGE ACTIONS
If the College acts against your interests
and you protest, it may ignore your pro-
tests 'because it is generally easier to let
controversies blow over than to deal with
a problem. Don't permit this to happen.
If your protests are ignored, confront
the college and demand a response. If you
feel strongly about it, get your friends to
confront the College in your behalf. You
may not be satisfied on the issue, but you
will be creating a history of action and that
is important.
IN THOSE relatively rare cases where
students win an issue, faculty and admin-
istrators may make commitments, but of-
ten do not live up to the letter or the spirit
of their commitments. The University has
not lived up to its 1970 Black Action Move-
ment commitment of 10 per cent minority
enrollment (at the target date, the minor-
ity enrollment was 7.3 per cent) and the
College has created a Student Faculty Pol-
icy Committee to give students a greater
influence in College governments which
the faculty has entirely ignored.
POLITICS OF LSA
Perspective on change
POLITICS OF LSA
Tactics for change
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By JOHN LANDE
and MARNIE HEYN
Governance
THIS IS THE single most important is-
sue for students. A system that fairly
represents student interests would go a
long way towards making this College an
exciting and stimulating place.
The governance proposal establishing a
representative student-faculty assembly has
some technical problems, but is a good
place to start. This measure should be re-
worked and re-introduced.
If passage of this proposal appears im-
possible after it is debated by the faculty,
perhaps the following proposal establishing
a Student's Advocate Office in the College
might be introduced as a compromise.
THE STUDENT ADVOCATE would:
1) Provide students relevant information
on current College governance
2) Sit on the College Executive Commit-
tee to represent student interests
3) Design studies of the College to provide
students with pertinent information about
the College
4) co-ordinate a pass/no-entry co u r s e
(currently before the Curriculum Commit-
tee) "Student Participation in College Gov-
ernance" for students officially and unof-
ficially participating in College governance.
Contact Charles Witke, 764-0320, if you
are interested.
5) Provide assistance to undergraduate
departmental associations.
Administration
A NINE-MEMBER search committee
composed of six tenured faculty, one non-
tenured faculty and two students has been
established to present a list of candidates
for the deanship to the President.
This can be very important. Although the
dean has relatively little actual authority,
she or he can set the tone for the Colege
and can be either very helpful or a con-
stant hindrance for students.
Actions of this committee should be
carefully covered in the Daily. While the
privacy of the candidates must be pro-
tected, students have a right to know
some basic information about all the candi-
dates. Certainly each of the candidates on
the final panel submitted to the President
should be carefully interviewed by the
Daily, particularly about what they intend
to do to improve the undergraduate exper-
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new dean will not have a history to defend
and new policies can more easily be creat-
ed. Serious student action can give the
new dean an excuse for pro-student actions
in her or his interactions with the College
and University.
Organized actions
1. Courses. Courses are ready-made or-
ganizations of people interested in studying
similar subjects. If a course you are in
is being handled poorly, confront the in-
structor with your complaints. If you still
receive no satisfaction, make your griev-
ance known to the rest of the class and or-
ganize an action (like a student-run class
session, a class strike, or submitting a
paper explaining why you disagree with
the instructor's practices in place of a
"regular" assignment - and demand credit
for it).
There is no reason why we should have
to suffer though bad courses.
2. Undergraduate Departmental Associa-
tions. Most of the problems in curriculum
and teaching are the fault of departments,
and so pressure should be exerted on this
level. Undergraduate departmental associa-
tions should be responsible for appointing
student members to departmental student
faculty committees, should handle student
course grievances, should make recom-
mendations to departments and the College
Executive Committee during the faculty re-
view process, and should co-ordinate stu-
dent actions such as promotional drives and
boycotts aimed at departmental courses.
3. Course Mart. Course Mart provides an
opportunity to study subjects, perspectives,
and approaches not available in department-
al offerings. The success of Course Mart
suggests an increasing dissatisfaction with
departmental courses and demonstrates one
method of boycotting departmental courses.
4. The Daily. The Daily is our student
newspaper whose function it should be to
regularly publish and publicize information
relevant to student interests. The Daily
has a lot of unrealized potential for com-
municating student interests, as do other
student media.
5. Student Counseling Office. The Stu-
dent Counseling Office should serve as a
clearinghouse of information relevant to
students' interests. Currently the counseling
and advising is limited to the counselors
who collectively run the Office. This can
be another powerful student resource if
used properly. You can help by committing
yourself to serve as a counselor or just
by offering informationn youthink might
By JOHN LANDE
and MARNIE HEYN
WE LIVE IN a period of time when
basic human values like justice, re-
sponsibility and mutual respect seem to
have all but disappeared.,
We live in a world where at virtually
every level and in every divison, a few
small elites control the resources and ser-
vces needed by all.
We live in a world where a few get fat
while the rest of the world (not just In-
dia, as if starving Indians didn't matter)
wastes away.
We live in a world where powerful coun-
tries meddle in the internal affairs of smal-
ler countries, purely for economic reasons,
fooling no one with their slick public rela-
tions. Note our relations with Cuba, Chile,
Russia, Spain and Greece.
We are creating an environment that will
soon no longer be able to support us.
We are ruled by a President who appears
to be a criminal and a fraud in more ways
than five.
WE LIVE in a country where a vice
president convicted of serious felonies who
never went to prison for his crimes is
luxuriously supported and protected at pub-
lic expense while vast numbers of those
who should be our most valued citizens are
confined in unbelievable degradation for
political crimes like poverty, unemploy-
ment, blackness and attempted personal ex-
pression and enjoyment.
We live in a society where an attorney
general has been indicted for obstruction
of justice and perjury.
" Citizens are governed by governments
they do not trust.
* Workers are represented by unions that
they feel don't protect their interests.
! Students are educated in institutions
that are economic tools of the military and
industry.
i This is a society where different color-
ed and sexed people do not trust and re-
spect each other.
0@ This is a world so filled with individ-
ual alienation that we become fascinated
and captivated by the violent and the bi-
zarre as the ultimate expression of per-
sonal power.
We live in a society that acts as if none
of this is happening, as if human'values
are luxuries we can no longer afford.
S We are students in a college that is
not only typical of our society but is par-
tially responsible for it.
WE HAVE NOT written anything here
that any of us does not know or have not
heard about. And yet we seem paralyzed,
as if unable and unwilling to act.
We see two basic kinds of choices avail-
able to us. We can ignore our problems and
hope that by closing our eyes have them
be gone when we awake from our apocaly-
ptic fantasies; or we can try to open our
eyes and our minds and try to stop the
next holocaust.
Perhaps we are over reacting and .per-
haps our world will heal itself without our
hard work, but we think not.
We do not believe that a "solution" exists
or can exist. There is no magic formula
which will make everything all right. We
believe that social and political improve-
ment will come about when people recog-
nize that it is a never ending task.
We believe that real, long term improve-
ment will only come about as the result of
an ever vigilant awareness of our social
systems by and of every segment of our
society, and a determination by great nuin-
bers of us to insure that our social struc-
tures are serving our interests at least
to the extent that we are serving their
interests.
OUR VISIONS of improving society are
anything but fun and games. It would frank-
ly be a nuisance for most of us to con-
centrate our awareness, our energies, and
our actions to try to make real improve-
ments. The alternatives as we see them
are catastrophic. Take your choice.
__" , ...,.
The Coets a grade
HIS IS THE END of the year and it is time to submit final grades. In the past two weeks
we have tried to give the College as complete an evaluation as we could given our re-
strictions. This of course can not go on a transcript. One single letter grade is needed.
If we were to grade individual aspects of the College, it would be as follows:
R espect for students .................... ................1)........................... D
Just settlem ent of conflicts ............... ......... .............................. D
Responsibility towards students...................................... ... C
Governance .................... ....................................E
R eform ...................... ............... ................................... ... .... E
r rienb n .- - - -- -'.. .. . .. . .. . . .. . . . . .. . . .
Unorganized actions
1. Choose the BGS degree rather than the
BA/BS degree. This will permit you great-
er personal planning of your program and
will permit you to choose how you want to
distribute and concentrate your studies.
This will put distribution, concentration and
foreign language courses into a freer course
market where they will have to sink or
swim on their own merits rather than on
the basis of rigid requirements. This will
also give you greater freedom to support
this College's courses or those of another
School or College at your choice.
2. Choose your courses carefully. You
should not have to be subjected to bad
courses or bad instructors. Be conscious
that in electing any course you are sup-
porting an instructor, a course, a depart-
ment or program, a College, a University,
textbook authors, publishers and bookstores.
These are your choices whether you make
them actively or passively.
3. Use independent study courses to study
-a anellvzimna tant narts of your ner.-
4. Take part in the faculty evaluation
process. Every instructor has to be eval-
uated several times. The next time you
suffer a bad instructor, remember that oth-
er students who felt the same way about
the instructor but did not act are par-
ttially responsible for your bad exper-
ience.
S. Be aware that this is a public Univer-
sity and that faculty and administrators are
public employees. You are entitled b'7 sta-
tute and judgment to a vast wealth of in-
formation. Take advantage of these re-
sources. Call or write administrators and
faculty and get any information you think
is pertinent. If you are not satisfied with
their responses, keep writing, asking for
further justifications of their actions un-
til you are satisfied.
Nobody likes to answer complaints con-
stantly, and administrators reach a point
where it is easier to change their policies
than to answer complaints. Nor can they
conduct their business as usual if all their
time is spent answering complaints.
This College and University are here to