Eighty-two years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan George 's fall: A political 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Doily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1972 Dept. blasts Green AFTER PO RING over hundreds of pages of testimony and meeting doz- ens of hours, the chemistry department committee reviewing the case of Prof. ..Mark Green finally reported its findings Tuesday. And it probably would have been bet- ter if it hadn't. For in the process of its investigation, it has performed an incredible disservice to the cause of academnic freedom, which it in fact doesn't understand. The report 'is extremely critical of Green in his presentation of an anti-war slide show to his Chemistry 227 classes, but merely glosses over the disgraceful action of Acting Dept. Chairman Thomas Dunn in suspending him. What the committee fails to see is that academic freedom means bending over backwards to allow the individual pro- fessor wide latitude in determining rele- vance in his course. The burden of proof therefore is on Dunn to demonstrate that the slide show is irrelevant. But in fact Dunn never did this. In- stead, he prejudged Green's action and stated as much in a memo, Oct. 5, the day of the first slide show. "Under the circumstances I regard it as completely inadmissable to utilize this time for purposes inconsistent with those of Chemistry 227," Dunn wrote. But in testimony; the committee re- ported, Dunn said, "I had not at that time, nor did I until much later, even suggest, much less assume that the ac- tual material was inappropriate." FACT that this glaring inconsist- ency did not figure prominently in the committee's report points up the drawbacks in having an ad hoc in-house committee investigating the case. As law Prof. Robert Burt who repre- sented Green in the case, "The commit- tee was very concerned with the impact of the report on Dunn." This is the problem with having a departmental group review the case. For whether they realize it or not, they have a bias. To0day's staff: News: Dave Burhenn, Beth Egnoter, Tom- my Jacobs, Debbie Knox, Sue Step- henson, Paul Travis Editorial Page: Denise Gray, Fred Shell Arts Page: Richard Glatzer Photo technician: Tom Gottlieb SARA FITZGERALD Editor PAT BAUER....Associate Managing Editor LINDSAY CHANEY...............Editorial Director MARA DILLEN..........Magazine Editor LINDA DREEBEN........Associate Manging Editor TAMMY JACOBS.................Managing Editor ARTHUR LERNER.................Editorial Director JONATHAN MILLER.................Feature Editor ROBERT SCHREINER ............ Editorial Director GLORIA JANE SMITH................Arts Editor ED SUROVELL.....................Books Editor PAUL TRAVIS .......... Associate Managing Editor NIGHT EDITORS: Robert Barkin, Jan Benedetti, Di- ane Levick, Jim O'Brien, Chris Parks, Charles Stein, Ted Stein. COPY EDITORS: Meryl Gordon, Debra Tha, EDITORIAL NIGHT EDITORS: Fred Shell Martin Stern. DAY EDITORS: Dave Burhenn, Jim Kentch, Marilyn Riley, Judy Ruskin, Eric Schoch, Sue Stephen- son, Ralph Vartabedian, Becky Warner. TELEGRAPH/ASSOCIATE NIGHT EDITORS: Prakash Aswani, Gordon Atcheson, Laura Berman, Penny Blank, Dan Blugerman, Bob Burakoff, Beth Eg- nater, Ted Evanoff, Cindy Hill, Debbie Knox, David Stoll, Teri Terrell. That's why people aren't convinced by the army's investigation of its own civil- ian snooping, or the justice department's report on the Watergate bugging case. Yet from the beginning of the Green controversy, administrators who could possibly have instired a fair hearing of the matter refused to get involved. This "hands-off" policy extends the hierarchial chain of command - literary college Dean Frank Rhodes, Vice Presi- dent for Academic Affairs Allan Smith, and finally, President Robben Fleming failed to provide any leadership in this matter, which admittedly had no prece- dent. ACADEMIC freedom, however, is not merely departmental. It is of con- cern to the entire University community. The crisis of initiative, however; has a more immediate impact on the career of Mark Green. For not only has the handling of the case thus far set an intolerable prece- dent, but it has denied Green due pro- cess. The committee has maintained that it could deny Green basic legal rights- such as the right to face his accusers - because it was not a tribunal, but could only recommend further investigation. But this is not what has happened. The committee has rendered specific judg- ments such as that the slide shows were "an inappropriate use of class time." Yet basic rights were denied. The committee, for instance-accord- ing to Burt-never presented Green with a list of the particulars it was investigat- ing. Such considerations as Green's "handling" of the slide show which were important to the committee, Burt said, had never been discussed with Green as a prominent issue. IN LIGHT of the unfortunate committee report, three important goals re- main: -To insure that Green gets a fair ten- ure hearing; -To establish some guidelines for ad- judicating similar disputes in the future; and -To raise the larger questions under- lying the controversy, such as a clarifi- cation of the academic freedom of the professor and power of the department chairman to limit it. GREEN must face official-sounding judgements from the review commit- tee at his tenure hearing, and one can only wonder aloud whether these pro- ceedings can now be fair. The committee stated that it was only concerned with "the actions of October 5 through October 9" and not with Green's performance in general as a professor. But how can you separate the two? Certainly those professors who were involved in the case or who sat on the review committee, must disqualify them- selves from participating in the decision to grant or not to grant tenure. To complicate matters, it is not clear where Green can appeal his case. Both Smith and Rhodes were consult- ed by Dunn before he suspended Green from his teaching duties. Their impar- tiality on any appeals from Green is questionable. FAIR TREATMENT for Green is at this point regrettably not ensured. Hope- fully it is not too late. -TED STEIN By JONATHAN MILLER SIOUX FALLS, S.D., Nov. 7 - IT BE- GAN in New Hampshire, newsmen and Senator, freezing to the bone, handshaking, plane hopping, shivering all the while. The mood was grim then and the polls not so good. It got worse when the Senator moved South to Florida, and found George Wallace had gotten there first, and the polls grew worse and the votes, when they were counted, were a disaster. But it was early days yet. Plenty of time to catch up, to win the recognition, even the respect, of the elusive electorate, so it was back North to Wisconsin, where radicals can win. It was cold there too, but it seemed, suddenly, as if the campaign was moving. Hundreds of kids fanned out across the state and knocked on doors for the Senator, and when the vote was count- ed it was clear who had won. FROM THERE ON it was a positive steamroller. State after state fell to the Senator's legions. The plane got bigger and the number of column inches grew. Here was the media's candidate. The Demo- crat's man out front, the winner. The Sen- ator took it all very seriously. He thought, he knew, he would prevail. "What are your chances of winning the presidency," I asked the Senator on a GEORGE frosty night in April as we flew in a tiny pair ofs plane from Green Bay to Milwaukee. "Oh," the Senator said as he sipped a and the S 7-Up, "I think if we can win this primary, graphed r beating Nixon will be the easy part." by the sc Then I believed him. Very nice, The Summer came and McGovern mov- good and t ed West, the steamroller in front of him, moil. This the delegate counts mounting. Things got polls, butl somewhat sticky out on the Coast, but The money it seemed as if the convention was his, coffers. locked-up, so to speak, before it even started. Then th Well, it didn't turn out that way, and in paper rep Miami things began looking sticky. They started ch were sticky. But the Senator's troops pre- Senator fo vailed once again, though it may have been and few f a pyric victory. papers gav THINGS MOVED to the up once again critical w Ph ilosophy, bi tuary IT HAD TO END this way and it finally did tonight. It ended as it began, with newsmen shivering to the bone and the Senator predicting victory. The faithful were all around, and they believed, believed so hard they would triumph that even when Cronkite told America at 7:30 p.m. that it was a "landslide of record proportions," no-one was ready to believe him, him, the most trusted man in America say the polls. In the sweaty Sioux Falls Coliseum a large crowd of the Senator's friends had gathered to bid him well in his term of' of- fice. They looked sullen now, as they wat- ched the television monitors and saw the results coming in. In the corner a rock band played, but few people danced. Most of them stood si- leritly and watched the small screens light up with the numbers that spelled defeat. And then, almost before it had started, the band stuck up Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land," and while the dozen tele- vision cameras took the scene to the world, the Senator mounted the steps and conceded defeat. THE FACES were damp, but it was hard to tell the tears from the sweat from where I stood. The Senator looked brave, and he told his . people that they had moved the country to peace, and they should be thankful. Then he left, and so did everyone else. A lot of hope had died. My notebook tells me that, at the time, I wasn't sure if "this is the end of an era, or the start of one." But I did write then, and I still feel now, that things could get very ugly. The humor of the campaign has gone now. The laughter on the press bus and the ribbing of the aircrew on South Dakota Queen II. The press is back in Washington, and in Ann Arbor, Austin and Cambridge. All that remains are the political obituaries. They will be written by better than I. And there will be plenty to write about in the next four years. Jonathan Miller is Feature Editor of The Daily. I Doily Photo by ROLFE TESSEM E McGOVERN, worn out from "hoofin' it" for 22 months, tries on a new shoes at home in South Dakota on election day. enator came home to be photo- iding a horse in the Black Hills ;nic backdrop of Mt. Rushmore. very, very nice. Things looked he Republicans were in some tur- joker might be behind in the he looks as if he can catch up. y started flowing into the enemy's ings started going bad. A news- orter in Detroit got a call, and ecking on some things, and the und himself with no running mate riends left in the world. The news- ve him hell for three weeks, three eeks when he needed credibility more than anything else, and he lost it instead. From then on it was a forgone con- clusion. Lou Harris and George Gallup couldn't be that wrong. It wasn't 1948, it wasn't Dewey vs. Truman, it was 1972 and digital computers and a Presidenf with a $50 million war chest and a lot of talent -so he was at little crooked, Americans have never minded that. Things moved from bad to worse and the Senator's denials of imminent doom rang true only to himself. The election seemed over before it had begun, and the .Republican keynote loomed as reality: Four More Years. jams and psychic ecology By PETER LAFRENIERE LAST WEEKEND, our commun- ity was treated to a lot more than just some pretty finerock & roll as Stephen Gaskin and the Farm Band swept through Ann Ar- bor on their nationwide tour of major campuses. Both nights they performed before packed houses, but for those of you who couldn't make it, I'd like to set down here some of the things that were said on those occasions. To begin with, Stephen has a true understanding of the real purport of a philosophy; it's not just a way of looking at the world or think- ing about it, but a way of living, a practical day by day, minute by minute approach to dealing with the here and now. There is con- sistency in the approach, but he knows that it is far more import- ant to be real than to-just be con- sistent. As he says, "It isn't hard to get high, but it's staying high that's difficult. Truth is the only way." Or as Jesus put it, "The truth can set you free." THE FIRST NIGHT in the Peo- ples Ballroom was a mild bummer, Stephen came on to a lot of people Letter To The Daily: Are 62 per cent of the American people totally wrong? In Wash- tenaw County McGovern surprassed Nixon by about 5,000 votes. A r e these 55,190 McGovern supporters in the right? It appears that the campus has been in the grip of "Blind Liber- als" who derive satisfaction by playing upon the emotions present in a college-type situation, Their George McGovern is portrayed as a sort of knight-in-shinging armor who has all the answers for t h e ills of society. Of course, Richard Nixon is set up as an inhuman political machine. Beyond a doubt, the "Blind" have logical insight in a negative way and these peo- ple responded with verbal hostil- ity. However, Friday night in the Un- ion Ballroom was a different af- fair. After the hand opened with some really mellow jams, Steph- en took the mike, paused to give people a chance 'to settle down and after a few minutes of meditation he began, but this time on a much more positive note. He explained that he came here to share some of his experiences and to tell us about the farm; be- ing an excellent word man, he touched on a lot of things: uni- versities, religion, karma, levels of consciousness, etc. Apparently, Gaskin sees many of the large formally structured re- ligions as "social clubs with far out tax privileges" and as hav- ing "lost contact with the spirit." He later said, "religion is not something conceptual you get out of a book, but from people. There is some stuff you can experience yourself, and nobody can tell you different." HE CAME DOWN even harder on the universities as being para- sites on the rest of the social bolv. "a place where by the time you hang around long enough to get your degree, your mind and bo: iv have probably rotted to the point where you can't work for a living and you can no longer think - - where are you?" Sound familiar? He mentioned that in beginning work on the farm, they all real- ized how incompetent they were and that eventually of the hund- red or so degrees they had walking around, only 2 or 3 were really useful - one an electrical engi- neer. Yet for all his word jugglery and apparently overstated opan- ions it was impossible for anyone to miss the deeply spiritual, tota:lyv involved man behind the personal- ity. That Stephen truly believes in what he is doing became evi- dent as he took us on a tour of the farm - via the media of slide projector and slides of the 1000 acre farm, a sort of Walden 2 sty- led community of 500 people in Tennessee. He said that after seeing huge utopian attempts come and go, he decided that the only approach was to go in their "like .he whole thing was a heart transplant, to make a contract with yourself that you could keep - it is not enoughbto see how the universe works, but you gotta spend the rest of your life putting what you know into practice - that's the price you pay, all you got." GASKIN SAID that the problem is most people figure "they're just passin' through, but you gotta take responsibility for your activities."' The philosophy used on the Farm is "tell the truth, be spiritual, and treat folks real", and also in connection with the farm, he em- phasized the saying, "we have no art, we just do everything t h e best we can." STEPHEN'S CRITICISM of wholesale religion and secular uni- versities was probably justified, though the trend, as Robert Bellah pointed out last week in his lec- ture, in both is away from the formal, dogmatic approach, and :s moving towards receiving the "in- ner message" by direct personal experience. However, I think that for the seriously inquisitive disciple (one who is following a discipline like Zen or Bhakti (Yoga) the signifi- cence of what Gaskins& Co. are doing pales tremendously. Stephen should not be mistaken for an enlightened man or as a Guru in whom one should place all ones trust and confidence. His books (Monday Night Class, Caravan) contain bits and pieces of old truths phrased in a new way, but for the advanced 'tudent they merely represent a hodge-podge patchwork of various systems of Buddhist and Vedantic thought, a curious blend of fact, fiction and opinion. Stephen's rhetoric is tailor-wade for this generation and the al- ternative approach he offers, that of rural communaluliving, based on a common spiritual bond is be- ing sought often by more and more young Americans. As he says, "I really know how the universe is working, and I know it gives you a fair shake." Peter LaFreniere is a local resi- dent who will be teaching a Course Mart class on Indian phil- osophy next term. I Voters complain about lines I when representing their Nixon il- lusion - Nixon is the incumbent. Since the McGovernites are in the majority in the 'U' they are able to, without fear, apply various pres- sure techniques to the non-Demo- crat and the undecided voter. One of their more popular methods of coercion is executed by door-to- door workers. If the Democrats had any sense, they would not go out of their way to use their rhe- toric to force people to vote for McGovern; a voter is pushed to decide alright - "anyone but Mc- Govern." The clever McGovernites meti- culously collect names of stubborn How co c . HAVEC 1V THAT IFRAT L -Wt? ~FOR t Q AMP Il'~ 50012, F hoop R' ) I H~OW COME' T HAVE TO 'C(a-Go aA Now )COMA YOU HMOKC Ak!? PP(K AQP W[,AfCUI (TV Ac-, /Iz AW3 TM6q ttQ uP F r N I I~flflu voters (undecided or otherwise) under the guise of pollsters. Next thing you know, there is a knock on the door. The "Blind Liberals", are they deaf too? They have never heard of a secret ballot. The most recent flagrant exam- ple of the Democrats fascist tac- tics occurred on Election Day in Detroit/ From here, hundreds of them poured into Detroit. In effect, these "concerned" students drag- ged the poor out of their homes and into the polling places, but un- fortunately events prove that this wasn't so simple as that. Certainly the McGovernites pressed t h e i r propaganda upon these unfortun- ate souls. Senator George McGovern's re- mark on Nov. 3 is painfully true, for it appears that the University of Michigan is kissing his ass 1,000 per cent! --Bill Heenan Nov. 8 On abortion To The Daily: AFTER WAITING five long hours with many other students I fin- ally voted. I asked the "election officials" why it was that there were only three voting machines at the Union where a large num- ber of students had been voting all day. I was told that in the summer primary less than a hundred peo- ple had voted there all day. Most university students however, work in the summer and therefore are not present to vote in Ann Arbor's summer primaries. For me, however, this was nct the worst part of the election. Ra- ther, it was the outcome of Pro- posal "B" - the abortion reform proposal. The defeat of this pro- or "no" decision on issues that affect most people individually-i.e. daylight savings time. In cases such as these the outcomes are understandable. However, with the abortion proposal the voters of Michigan decided an issue which would have permitted individuals the freedom of a personal choice. Monies would not have been levied on taxpayers had the proposal pas- sed; no one would have had to take advantage of abortions if they did not so choose; in short, no one's righs would have been infringed upon. As it is, the voters have de- cided that whether a woman wants an abortion or not - she can't have it in Michigan. (legally!) To deny an abortion to a woman who wants one and cannot afford to go to a distant state (for exam- ple New York or California) and therefore must keep the child with neither family, affection or financ- es to support the child is a restric- tion of personal freedom. Often in cases like this both mother and child end up being cared for by the state. A further consequence in some such cases, (although admit- tedly an extreme one) is the pos- sibility of suicide on the part of the pregnant woman as a resuilt of de- spair. For both situations, the vot- ers of Michigan must take respon- sibility for they have made the de- cision. There are still alternatives open to women - one can make a costly trip to another state where abor- tions can be secured - or one can have an illegal abortion performed in Michigan (obviously this has drawbacks). To allow legal abor- tions in Michigan would have meant better facilities and care for those involved. Furthermore, as abortion becomes more widespread contently reading of the abortion proposal's defeat would be shocked to discover that their own daugh- ters have made the decision to have an abortion. Progress - perhaps it really is a myth! -Valerie Kuehn '73 Nov. 8 Vote denied To The Daily: I AM A WORKING person, therefore I was effectively denied the right, not the privilege, of vot- ing last Tuesday. I went to vote twice, but the waiting periods (2 hours during the day and 4 hours during the evening) were longer than I could afford to wait. Let's take a closer look at this issue. By state law there should be one machine for every 600 vo- ters. Let's assume that it takes every voter two minutes to vote and that there is no time loss due to people's leaving and entering the voting booth. That means that it should take the 600 voters 1200 minutes, or 20 hours, to vote. If the poll is open for 13 hours, then 35 per cent of the voters will not be able to .vote during this time. They may wait to vote after the poll has closed. But some people cannot wait the two to four hours it frequently took to vote last Tuesday. They were effectively denied the right to vote. Who are they? Mothers with chil- dren, students with tests the fol- lowing day, working people. Please write to your Michigan Congressman and demand reason- able changes in the voting laws, so that all people who wish to ex- ercise their right to vote have a reasonable chance of doing so. I WEA6 TO ~6cto*36 To I') « AW TH flEY J 'S OUR :tJ C~f