Eighty-one years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan faeulty comment On being free . . . 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 . to be bad Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1972 Respect for the law WHILE THE NIXON 're-election cam- paign hammers on the need for more respect for law, the men in charge of the -campaign apparently have no scru- ples about breaking the law when it suits their purposes. Early this week, a Texas oil executive told House investigators how Nixon fund-raiser Maurice Stans approved an illegal Mexico-to-Washington transfer of funds destined for the Republican campaign coffers. Pennzoil Corp. President William Liedtke, a major GOP fundraiser in the Southwest, last April told Stans that money was available from Mexico, and asked if such a transaction was legal. After a day's thought, Stans informed the oilman that it was "okay 'to bring the money to Washington." Liedtke got the money from Mexico - $100,000-plus another $600,000 collected in the Southwest on April 5, and rushed the loot to Washington where it was stashed away in Republican campaign coffers without identifying the donors. On April 7, an election reform act went into effect that requires disclosure of all contributors who give more than $100 to any candidate or political com- mittee. THE ONLY TROUBLE with the Mexican money escapade was that $89,000 came from a Mexican citizen. This vio- lates U. S. election laws which prohibit political gifts from foreign nationals. The $89,000 has since been traced to the bank account of Bernard Barker - one of five men arrested in the June 17 break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate apartments. Furthermore, Stans has been less than open about the whole affair. He has de- nied knowledge of the funds transfer scheme, in spite of the fact that Liedtke has sworn that he consulted Stans. But no one has explained why the illegal transaction occurred. The Republican's furtive behavior with regard to campaign fund-raising encour- ages, disrespect for all law and authority. After all, crime in the streets is really nothing compared to crimes that would steal a country. -LINDSAY CHANEY Editorial Director "It's in the bag!" The All-American girl 0@00 ... a dream or a nightmare? By CARL COHEN THE RIGHT of free association comes ever more directly into con- flict with the right to equal and non-discriminatory treatment. The resolution of such conflicts may carry high social costs, but some such resolutions cannot be sidestepped. Should a purely social club be permitted to restrict its membership to whites only, or blacks only? What if such a club is tax exempt? Shall a club restricted to Polish- Americans he granted a liquor license? May the Harvard Club restrict the use of some of its facilities to men only? Deciding justly among competing claims in this sphere becomes more difficult as it becomes more widely' necessary. General principles, to which lip service has been given, have not been much tested until recently. Now the testing has begun, and we encounter a host of mun- dane considerations and practical circumstances that need to be fitted into a set of moral judgments. See the dilemma. On the one hand we cherish the right to assemble with whom we please, for the mutual pursuit of such lawful purposes as may be of interest to us. We are free to choose our own associates, and our own objectives - charitable, recreational, religious orother. Within reasonable limits, we need not answer to anyone, in or out of government, for the worth or character of our private business, jointly pursued. If just representative government is the warp of a good society, real freedom of private action, individually and in groups, is its woof. ON THE OTHER HAND, we cherish the right of all to equal treat- ment. Irrelevant considerations of race, religion, sex, national origin, or any other, certainly must not be allowed to interfere with the uni- versal right to participate effectively in the life of the community, or in the allocation of education opportunities, or in the distribution of any goods which, in principle, are offered or guaranteed to citizens gener- ally. But how far into the private activities of voluntary associations ought this protection of equal treatment reach? In admission to schools, or the rental of privately owned but publically offered housing, we do not find the question very difficult. The hard cases now arise in the sphere of private, voluntary associations, with special functions, whose activities are neither official, or public, yet which play a consequential role in the life of the community. Some cases get very sticky. General principles we must have, but there is none that will resolve every variety of conflict. We may be reasonably confident that any single-minded appeal - either to equality or to freedom - will yield painful results. There are two quite different approaches to this question which, although conceptually distinct, do tangle in practice. The first concerns the kind and degree of support given to a private association by the government of the community, and the consequent right of that gov- ernment. to impose standards regarding membership policies and, the like. Direct government subsidies may clearly be conditioned upon meeting such standards. But other so-called benefits - corporate char- ters, liquor licenses, the use of public parks and buildings, tax-exemp- tion of income, and tax-deductibility of gifts, raise some exceedingly close questions which space limitations oblige me to bypass. I ATTEND here to the second approach only, which looks not to the kind or degree of government support, but to the nature of the private association itself. Private associations differ greatly in kind and func- tion, and these differences bear directly upon the right of such associa- tions to discriminate (on the basis of race, religion, etc.) in their internal business. We need a fine taxonomy of private associations. Tentatively, I offer a rough taxonomy, distinguishing seven categories, in three groups. And I offer some conclusions, no doubt needing further defense based on the distinctions drawn. Group A comprises those private associations which: 1) offer goods or services to the public at large - e.g., hotels and retail stores, barbers and automobile clubs; 2) offer no service to the public at large, but perform some of- ficial or quasi-official functions in the public interest - e.g., medical and bar associations, and real estate boards, which set professional standards, or control opportunities to practice certain professions; 3) offer no general public service, and have no quasi-official func- tion', but operate in fact as a place of public accommodation - e.g., a fraternal order in whose clubhouse public dances, with charged admis- sion, are commonly held; or a club adjoining city hall in which, in- formally, much public business is carried on. y Attica: Now it's all better? THIS WEEK the New York State Spe- jective' cial Commission on Attica made pub- leads i lic its findings, including its conclusion anti-er that state governor Nelson. Rockefeller, lizes t the commission's authorizer, made a mis- have t take in refusing to go to the prison for fect is negotiations before last year's uprising that th turned into a bloody massacre. be solv Today, a year after Rockefeller's de-. Inste cisions caused the death of 32 gunless in- horror mates and 11 prison employes at the seem li hands of state troopers, conditions re- fect o *main essentially the same, if not worse. has co Attica, whose inmate population is still work;i predominately black, continues to main- uneci tamn intolerable food and medical con- doubt fi ditions, and the prison's racist atmos- paigns phere is equally intense, by all reports. son ref The Attica Commission appears to su- AT T fer from a traditional special commis- he ¢ion disease, the tendency to bury reality out co under mld-mannered, reductive, "b- mates could n Editorial Staff inmate SARA FITZGERALD Mildly Editor conditi PAT BAUER............Associate Managing Editort ROSE SUE BERSTEIN ....Associate Managing Editor tica. R LINDSAT CHANEY................Editorial Director slaught MARK DILLEN ...........Magazine Editor LINDA DREEBEN......Associate Managing Editor mately TAMMY JACOBS................Managing Editor duced ORIN LABARDEE. ... ....Personnel Director RTHUR LERNER. ........Editorial Director Thee JONATHAN MILLER.:...............Feature Editor Sesl ROBERT SCHREINER.........Editorial Director seems GLORIA SMITH.....................Arts Editor to the ED SUROVELL ....................... Books Editor ney ge PAUL TRAVIS..........Associate Managing Editor NIGHT EDITORS: Robert Barkin, Jan Benedetti, mission Chris Parks, Gene Robinson, Zachary Schiller, Ted collect Stein. COPY EDITORS: Diane Levick, Jim O'Brien, Charles not be Stein, Marcia Zoslaw. Te' DAY EDITORS: Dave Burhenn, Daniel Jacobs, Jim The Kentch, Marilyn Riley, Nancy Rosenbaum, Judy York la Ruskin, Paul Ruskin, Sue Stephenson, Karen Tink- subpoe lenberg, Becky Warner.hsuwill Today's staff:.records sion is tion of News: Tammy Jacobs, Charles Stein, Ted punish Stein, Paul Ruskin, Eric Schock Mr. L Editorial Page: Lindsay Chaney to the Photo Technician: Tom Gottlieb New hopie By BILL ALTERMAN unfortuna FOR THOSE of you despairing of based on ever hearing any good political Democrat. news this Fall, cheer up. Though stronghold not given much play in the na- where mo tion's newspapers, a little noticed are from. primary runoff last Tuesday serves Which w as a ray of hope on an otherwise except th gloomy horizon. today is 7 For on that glorious day R e p . you an id John McMillan (D-S.C.) "T h e Washingto Mayor of. Washington", lost in a last week runoff election. Thus McMillan's that D.C. chairmanship, that of the House tot of peo District Committee, will in all Black Pa] likelihood pass to Rep. Charles the city a Diggs Jr. (D-Mich) a black, and McMilla the colony of Washington D.C. will year as a move one step closer to equal sta- man, and tus with the rest of America. spent as Washington's woes began way trict Coi back in 1790 when President George has done Washington decreed that a Fed- District o eral City would be built on a ten for the m mile by ten mile chunk of Mary- plantation land and Virginia. Presumably. the more me its chief claim to fame was its was ther " prose. Their search for fact ts members to a kind of amoral, notional position which neutra- he meaning their research might oward producing change. The ef- a false sense of resolution: now e "truth" is out the problem must ed. ad, 500 pages of truth without the and anger that the facts demand kely to produce absolutely no ef- n the prison system. Rockefeller mmended the commission on its it has produced an appropriately ing document which will no it in with future Rockefeller cam- statements on the need for pri- orm in the Rockefeller style. HE SAME time it has avoided the art of the issue-mentioning with- nment that the assault on the in- had no apparent purpose, since it ot have saved the hostages if the s were intent on killing them. it deplores prison racism and the ons that existed and exist at At- ockefeller is not blamed for the er; no important men are ulti- indicted, no change will be pro- only effect the commission's work likely to have at this point relates subpoena by deputy state attor- neral Robert Fischer of the com- 'S testimony records, which were d on the basis that sources would revealed. commission's general counsel, New twyer Arthur Liman, who calls the na "an incredible betrayal", says go to jail before he gives up the . It appears the Attica Commis- about to experience a demonstra- the state's ability to absorb and criticism at once. Liman may be closer in condition Attica inmates than he realizes. -REBECCA WARNER for the tely, committee heads are cludin seniority. And due to the roy of ic Party's longtime Caroli I on the South, that is McMil st of the committee heads among popula ould all not be so serious cent o e District of Columbia McM '0 percent black. To give jority ea of what the people in the ru n are up against, only (he re McMillan proclaimed which has "outgrown itself. A and 7 'ple have moved in. The ent b nthers are trying to run one. nd other things." Min n is currently in his 28th 1970, b South Carolina congress- Diggs 24 of them have been andh head of the House Dis- bothm mittee. As chairman he McMil his best to deprive the fell 6 f Home Rule, running it major) ost part as his own little runoff up North. Among h i s rette.' norable accomplishments Craig, nasane of the District sunnor By SARA FITZGERALD WHEN I WAS 12, I didn't know who Harriet Tdbman was, or Carrie Chapman Catt, or even Su- san B. Anthony. But if you'd asked me about Nancy Anne Fleming, Maria Flet- cher, Jacquelyn Mayer, Donna Ax- um or Vonda Kay Van Dyke there was no hesitation - the Miss Americas from 1961 to 1965. The first Saturday in September would find me in front of my tele- vision set - rooting for M i s s Michigan, and carefully judging the talent, figure, evening gown and final question of each candidate. My parents let me stay up late for thataspecial night of the year, the perpetuation of an American institution, the annual indulgence in an American monarchy. Once again we have a new queen -Terry Anne Meeuwsen, 23, who comes to her subjects from t h e backwoods of northern Wisconsin. Now to any Miss America buff - and there are many - Terry had to be the odds-on winner going down to the final hours of the pag- eant last Saturday night. The one- time member of the New Christy. Minstrels had confidently won her talent preliminary, and she'd pick- ed up the swimsuit award too. Any double winner has got to be a real threat. (A brief note on Miss American- dom: It's a "swimsuit" not a bath- ing suit" contest - that makes it more respectable, according to pa- geant officials. And the s t a t e queens aren't really supposed to give their measurements out to the press - the accent of the pageant is supposedly on scholarships, not beauty.) 'IUS, IT WAS no surprise when the name of double-winner Terry was called out, when she shed the appropriate tears and walked down the runway. For she was in many ways a typ- ical Miss America. Brown haired, brown eyed, she's a fundamentalist who supports President Nixon, wears a POW bracelet and sends money to an orphan in Thailand. And she'll dutifully give up h e r boyfriend for a- year (good grac- ions, he's a 36-year-old divorced father!) and take on such "friends" as Pepsi-Cola and Toni. But she's typical of Miss Amer- icas in other respects. Like Debbie Bryant, the 1966 version, who stud- ied the biogs and photos of what she considered to be her toughest competition, Terry also charted a course of action. She had to decide whether to go to New York and further her singing career or take .a crack at the "big one" and risk spending a year touring Wisconsin dairy shows. She won the gamble- and $50,000 in personal appearance money and a $10,000 scholarship. (Anita Bryant would disagree. In her autobiography, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, the singer recounts that she was glad she was only second runner-up as Miss Ok- lahoma of 1958. She got the ex- posure she wanted without having to put aside hertcareer for a year.) Terry obviously felt differently. For Miss America represents a way for the all-American girl to achieve national prominence. In a world where little boys become president, doctors, lawyers and so forth, how else can little girls make it to the "top" - that throne at the end of the Miss America run- way, that pre-packaged, wind-her- up-and-she-talks-about-everything- hut-the-Vietnam-war ideal of Am- erican womanhood. AND SO WE ALL tried to be Miss Americas. We learned to do our hair, to smile, and answer ques- tions politely. And it was all pos- sible until we only grew to 32 in- ches on top and only got ,as far as "Donkey Serenade" on the oboe. Se we went back to the T.V. set and dreamed - unaware that it was all a farce, that at least one ex-Miss America, Jacque Mercer, from 1949, believed that "You could take an orangutan, and with a year'straining, it couldbe Miss America." The venerable- Bert Parks, adds in Frank Deford's book There She It, "It's corny. Let's face it. It's corny and it's basic and it's Amer- ican. But in this sick, sad, world, a little fairlyland is welcome and refreshing. Apparently, from the fig'ires, we are right. About t h e only thing I agree with Mr. Nixon is that yes, there are a lot of nice people out there beyond the big, slick areas - and these are good, straight people for the most part. Perhaps they are narrow, but they have a great longing -for normalcy, asrifostn f do, and Mis s Amerca bys tem apiece of that dream.'' Or a piece of the nightmare. Sara HI:. gcra/d T/h' D~ally Is editor of # ,f "last colony" g Diggs and Walter Faunt- the District went to South na to whip up support for lan's primary opponents the sixth district's black tion, which constitutes 40 per of the total population. lillan was kept from a ma- in the first primary but in noff the ageless Congressman efuses to reveal his real age is somewhere between 70 '6 defeated his black oppon- y a margin of over two to dful of what happened in blacks such as Fauntroy and stayed out of South Carolina McMillan's opponents were white. In the first primary lan gathered a plurality but percent short of an absolute ity and was forced into a with 36-year-old John Jen- The third candidate, Roger had originally promised to rt Jenrette hut McMillan, who Millan, whose antagonism towards the citizens of Washington knows no bounds, was calling for legisla- tion ceding Washington back to Maryland where it originally came from. Apparently the idea of the Federal City being controlled by Blacks is more than the southern gentlemen's morality can bear. However, the officials and voters of the Old Line State have made it abundantly clear that when they said aloha to that little chunk of land 182 years ago it was for keeps. Actually Diggs is currently only third in line for the chairmanship but the two ahead of him, T o m Abernathy of Mississippi and John Dowdy of Texas are retiring at the end of this term. With the Committee realignment in January, Congress will probably pass a home rule bill setting up an elected mayor and city council with legislative authority subject to congresional veto. Afer ithat PRIVATE organizations inthese first three categories present few serious theoretical problems. Racial, religious, or sexual discrimination are obviously not relevant to the public or quasi-public functions that are really being served by such organizations, and must therefore not be permitted to interfere with the just fulfillment of those functions. Of course, decding whether a given club or organization is in fact serving an important public function through its membership, or within its precincts, may sometimes. prove difficult. Much harder to deal with are private associations in Group B, being those which: 4) serve genuinely recreational purposes - e.g., private hunting lodges, swimming clubs, or bowling leagues; 5) are based on special avocational or intellectual interests - e.g., stamp clubs, debating societies, or the local historical association; 6) are purely social, forming wholly around the personal attraction of the members for each other. Recreational or intellectual activities (categories 4 and S above) sometimes rely upon facilities that are unique in the community-e.g., its only lake, or its historical archives. Because all citizens, regardless of race, religion, sex, etc., are entitled to the enjoyment of such community assets, all citizens (with appropriate avocational qualifica- tions) have an equal claim to membership in organizations which con- trol the use of such facilities. Barring circumstances of that sort, I hold that in all of Group B discrimination in membership or participa- tion on grounds of race, religion, sex, etc., even where we may think it highly objectionable on moral grounds, ought not be prohibited by law. The freedom to assemble or associate must not be conditioned upon its use in certain approved ways. As in the case of free speech, we do not ask what will be said to determine whether it may be said, so with freedom of association, we ought not; as a community, ask first with whom the association will be to determine whether the association may be formed or allowed to continue. If that freedom is contingent upon its being exercised in certain approved ways, no right of free association remains; what is left is a privilege for those who act in ways the authorities deem acceptable. Whether, on a given issue, the supervision of those authorities proves honorable or despicable, the freedom of that community will have been much damaged. GROUP C comprises all those private associations which 7) are based openly upon special religious or ethnic affiliations - e.g, Afro-American clubs, or Catholic Confraternities. Here discrimina- tion is relevant to an honorable social function and ought to be cherished rather than despised. Cultural pluralism is a value in Amer- ican life greatly undervalued, in my view. But if we treasure such diver- sity, we should realize that it can only thrive when supported concretely by organizations and associations. Such associations must therefore be z Miss Arnerie,;1 973 HRP candidate To The Daily: THE MICHIGAN DAILY, long a progressive force in the Ann Ar- bor community, should be ashamed of its sexist headline regarding lane Fonda's fund-raising speech against the war and for the state- wide Human Rights Party. "Jane smashes Dick at party" is neither cute nor allowable at a time when women all over the nation are struggling to overcome all forms of oppression. That includes a woman like Jane. Fonda. a long-time activist and