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