Summer Daily Summer Edition of T HE MICHIGAN DAILY Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Friday, July 27, 1973 News Phone: 764-0552 War Powers Act unconstitutional, impractical, and absolutely absurd Alternative school: A racist facade BY VOTING EFFECTIVE approval Wednesday for an "alternative" school for "disruptive" students, the Board of Education has authorized the city's first reform school. No other term can describe such a reactionary and punitive proposal. There is one significant difference between the facil- ity, first proposed by Trustee Cecil Warner, and a reform school. While juveniles can be imprisoned in correctional institutions for offenses which are not punishable in adults, such confinement must at least be preceded by a court hearing. The alternative school, on the other hand, offers students no semblance of a judicial process and proposes to punish them for a vague collection of assum- adly anti-social acts. The repressive implications of such a procedure are obvious. Like juvenile correction enthusiasts, Warner claims the students singled out for placement in the alternative school will receive remedial and vocational services, as well as adequate separate but equal education. The example provided by hundreds of reform schools across the nation should indicate the absurdity of this contention. Further, the fact that the local schools have recently begun cutting allocations for counsellors, social workers and special education teachers shows just how helpful an experience the new school is likely to provide for the city's high school troublemakers. Much more sinister than the school's educational as- pects, however, are the unmistakeably racist overtones it carries. Warner protests against such charges, saying there are "lots of white kids in the schools that have not been socialized." Apparently he is willing to extend al- ternative school admissions to include a poor white con- tingent as well. Such broadmindedness cannot camouflage the obvious motivation of the proposal. In the past few years the rebellion of black high school and junior high school students against racism in the public schools has not met with any degree of com- prehension from the vast majority of school administra- tors, school board members and city residents. Many white parents cling fearfully to the fictional good old days when social and political issues were absent from the schools. Naturally, the school board has responded to the mood of its most vocal constituents, Ann Arbor's version of the Pontiac anti-busing reactionaries. The school for disruptive students is only part of a wider movement to divide the city's pupils into separate buildings by race, class, and educational expectancy. We can only hope that the city's parents will wake up and realize what the separatist trend will do to every student's education. Racism, and militaristic discipline will never stop re- bellion or racial mistrust in our schools. Pentagon lies again TrHE PENTAGON'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT last week of secret bombing raids over Cambodia and the subse- quent falsification of statistics about those raids only con- firms long-held suspicions of Defense Department lying. The numbers released to the Senate after the near- heroic investigation by Sen. Harold Hughes (D-Iowa) are still suspect, but at least they do admit that the bombing took place. They show 3630 secret missions:between March 1969 and May 1, 1970 when American troops invaded. According to former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, now counselor to the President, the orders for the secrecy dame from the National Security Council. THE RATIONALE for the cloak and dagger tactics, ac- cording to Laird, was that had the raids been publicly acknowledged the then-leader of Cambodia Norodom Si- hanouk would have been forced to demand that they be halted. The reasoning ignores the fact, that the Cambodians certainly knew they were being bombed and their homes were being destroyed. And the communists, whether in China, Russia, or Vietnam certainly knew that their allies were being raided. The only secrecy maintained, then, was in the United States and that tragedy is as great as the bombing itself. LAST WEEK on July 20, the Sen- ate debated and passed by a vote of 72-18 the so-called War Powers Act to govern the use of Armed Forces during the absence of a declaration of war. When the House had passed a somewhat modified form of the bill, President Nixon said that he would veto such a bill. Much has been said in support of the b ill1 which is now in a Senate-House conference commitee, and will soon come to a final vote. The following is a speech during the Senate debate by Sen. Sam Er- vin (D-N.C.) on July 20 detailing his reasons for opposing the War Powers Act: DESPITE the popularity of the so-called war powers bill, I cannot in good conscience support it. The reasons for my opposition are ex- tremely simple. The Constitution clearly makes a distinction between two kinds of wars. that the President of the United States, as the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, cannot exercise his constitutional power, yea, his con- stitutional duty, to protect this country against invasion for more than 30 days without the consent of the Congress. We hear much nowadays about the separation of powers. Here is a power and a duty which the Con- stitution clearly imposes upon the President of the United States, to use the Armed Forces to protect this country against invasion. And here is a bill which says express- ly that the President of the United States cannot perform his consti- tutional duty and cannot exercise his constitutional power to protect this country against invasion for more than 30 days without the af- firmative consent of Congress. In my opinion, in spite of the good purposes of the bill and the (This) bill says expressly that the President of the United States cannot perform his con- stitutional duty and cannot exercise his con- stitutional power. :r:r ry r :::"+ar": ",": "';:+ ',,'"-y-.,.k:< . x :