Page 6-Sunday, October 30, 1977-The Michigan Daily
The Mithigon Doily---Sunday, Octc
Richard 'Vidmer,
quarterback
I
DUMB JOCK, Richard Vidmer is
not. _
As first-string quarterback for Mich-
igan's lackluster football effort in 1967,
Richard didn't think his size or his talent
measured up for a career in the pros. So
after spearheading Michigan's overhead
attack for three seasons-"we lost more
than we should have, but we threw a lot
more back then"-Richard thought he'd
enter law.
But the Academic All-American's game
plan changed somewhat following a post-.
graduation trip to the Soviet Union in
December 1967. What started out as a
pleasure trip soon motivated Richard to
study the language and society of the
Russian people.
In the fall of 1968 Richard returned to the
University's political scienc department to
work on a Masters degree in Soviet gover-
nment and politics. In the fall of 1977, old
number 27 is polishing his Ph.D disser-
tation on Soviet management theory, and
teaching Soviet government to students
at the University of Virginia.
Professor Vidmer "sure misses Ann
Arbor," the site of his football heroics
of the '60s and graduate studies until
last fall.
Still a keen follower of Michigan foot-
ball, Richard provided local fans with
some exciting moments in an otherwise
forgettable era of Wolverine football.
A S AN UNDERGRADUATE journalist in 1967, Roger Rapoport
was to the University's movers and shakers a symbol of
all that was "deviant" about the Michigan Daily. Never has a
Daily typewriter generated as much controversy as when Roger's
name came before the Board in Control of Student Publications to
be approved as editor.
First, the Rapoport by-line had appeared, when he was a
sophomore, above a story revealing highly questionable business
dealings between the University and Eugene Power, a University
benefactor and Regent. The Michigan attorney general's office
looked into the affair, concurred with Roger's conclusion that the
relationship constituted a "substantial conflict of interests," and
Power resigned from the Board.
- Strike one.
Then Roger reported that the University was planning to use
over $4.75 million in student tuition fees to pay for a new theatre.
Strike two.
These stories came amid a time of upheaval on campus, when
Daily editors were supporting the student power movement,
urging decriminalization of marijuana, and attacking the Univer-
sity's participation in CIA and war research. And then the Daily's
senior staff unanimously nominated Roger as editor for 1967-68.
1967
See VIDMER, Page 8
Bruce Kahn, student leader
WOMEN AT THE UNIVERSITY can
thank Bruce Kahn for improving
their social lot. It was during his tenure as
president of the now-defunct Student
Government Council (SGC) that Univer-
sity powermongers grudgingly removed
"hours" for female dormitory residents,
and the registers that once noted the
arrival and departure of Stockwell and
Barbour residents were thus
relegated-permanently-to the wastebin.
The point of fighting for such
issues-like the rights of sophomore
women to spend the night away from the
dorm or South Quad residents to dress as
they please for dinner-was to let students
live by their own rules, says Bruce from
his newly opened law office in Bir-,
mingham.
But what it really represented was
student frustration in coping with larger
issues-Vietnam and the draft, for instan-
ce.
Roger-
Rapoport,
Revisiting the
Strike three, and Roger Rapoport, a 20-year-old college
student from Muskegon, Michigan, was out. In February, 1967,
the Board in Control labelled him "unacceptable" for assuming
the Daily's top position.
But within three days, letters and telegrams from 36 state
legislators and hundreds of alumni, plus a Detroit Free Press
editorial denouncing the University's intrusion on editorial
freedom, had the Board reconsidering. The group reversed its
big names
of '67
By Patty Montemurri
Bruce won his SGC seat with nearly 4,000
votes-a mandate from 4,000 students who
were fed up with the University spending
student-contributed funds to support the
bloodshed in Vietnam.
It boiled down to "whether the Univer-
sity should spend funds to make sniper-
scopes for the war," he recalls, and
questioning other ways University resear-
ch contributed to the war effort.
1967
As SGC president, Bruce says he "lear-
ned how to question the decision-making
process." He perfected his style while at
Harvard, where his law school professors
drilled into him the legal subtleties for
what he had learned as an undergraudate
leader.
"Decisions can be wrong, decisions
made by higher authorities aren't
necessarily right just because the people
who happen to have the authority to make
them, made them," he said.
The former philosophy major now ap-
plies those principles to his Birmingham
practice, which specializes in commercial
litigation. After living in California and
Ann Arbor after law school, Bruce has set-
tled down with his wife of two weeks in
Bloomfield Twp.
And what does the old firebrand of
student activism think of the new conser-
vatism on campus?
"You know something," he theorizes, "I
understand that everybody says that kids
are more conservative and so forth. I don't
know whether they're more conservative
or whether they're simply not confronted
with the same issues.
"Confronted with the same issues, my
suspicion is that they would react like we
did. I don't think kids are that meek and
dumb, that if somebody hit them over the
head with a hammer they wouldn't react to
it."
"May you live in interesting times."
No doubt scrawled on a Mason Hall bathroom
wall during the turbulent '60s, the old Chinese proverb
summarizes the sentiments of 'some interesting people
who were on campus during an interesting year, 1967.
A decade ago, a swelling war in Asia was taking
its toll not only in the rice paddies of Vietnam, but on
college campuses throughout this country. Another
war-this one in the Middle East--sparked further
outrage. And the nation's cities were exploding from
the core.
At the University, Robben Fleming, former chan-
cellor at the University of Wisconsin, was named to
replace Harlan Hatcher as president. Four Cinema
Guild members were arrested and faced obscenity-
charges for showing the flick "Flaming Creatures."
Plastic I.D. cards embossed with social security num-
bers were issued for the first time. And Vera Baits
Housing hosted what was perhaps the first University-
authorized beer party iii the history of the dormitory-
system. Staff members strictly supervised attendance,_
limited to guests and dates over 21.
The four people on this page made their mark at
the University in -1967. They also found time to sit
back and observe the tempest which raged around
them. Here they are, ten-years later.
decision, and Roger found himself at the D
Roger now lives in Berkeley, Californ
two-year-old son, and is living the life of
writer.
"They tried to quiet us down a little t
administration's campaign to keep him o
backfired. After the storm subsided, "we
We felt pretty free, and continued the sar
done previously."
His formal education behind him, an
magazine articles to his credit, Roger lef
and headed west. From his life at the Ur
vations of the tumult that characterized C
pieced together an analysis of the student
titled Is the Library Burning?, his first b
the UGLI.
Fourmore books since then and
magazines-Harpers, New Times, an
few-have broadened Roger's audience I
environs.
"I think now, looking back, in some v
then," Roger sighs. "Everything was a lo
about. The kinds of issues we had-
See RAPOPORT, Page 8
1977
CladaBch twrite
L IKE SO MANY in her generation,
she exploredthe mysticismof the
Far East and thought she'd make her
home in America's Far West. Instead, 1967
Hopwood Award winner Claudia Buckholts
went to visit her sister in Boston after
graduation and never left.
With the $1,000 she won for her Hopwood
short story entry, "The Kingdom of the
Sun," the 32-year-old Ypsilanti native
travelled and lived in India for several
months. Upon her return, she planned to
seek her fortune in California, but enjoyed
life so much in the shadow of Harvard that
she decided in 1968 to carve herself a niche
in Cambridge's "literary-,Bohemian cir-
cles."-
And she has done just that.
During the last ten years, between jobs
as a typist, waitress, astrology columnist
Claudia hashmanaged to winnumerous
honors for her writing, which she has
published in local magazines.
She has directed a weekly workshop for
local poets-"a real community of other
artists"-at Harvard's Phillips Brooks
House. And :"Gargoyle," a magazine foun-
ded and edited by Claudia, has become a
showplace for the verse of New England
poets.
Despite her accomplishments, Claudia
-hasn't held a full-time job since 1969. "Like
a majority of artists;".she says, "I have
not been able to _make a living from my
work."
But to devote the time she says she must
to her writing and reading, Claudia has
"chosen to live in rather tenuous economic
circumstances, i.e. poverty."
See BUCKHOLTS, Page 8
Daily Photo by AL
Bruce Kahn, and
ke him, were hit
neo
campus