Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Cultures different, but very similar 420 Moynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970 NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODAS i 'Liberation': A failure IN ONE DECISIVE hour, the North Hall ROTC building was "liberated" into the "Peoples Liberated Center." This action was accomplished by a coalition of vari- ous groups which had only one objective- the take over of the building. Of course, the individual groups had different mo- tives for taking over the building, but t h e s e differences were inconsequential while everyone was working toward a common goal. After ROTC personnel were informed that the building was no longer their ex- clusive domain, the coalition decided that the building would become a day-care, community, and strike center. The University administration, taken by surprise, issued a statement after ur- gent conferences among its top officials, warning of fire hazards and saying that normal use of the building must continue. A later statement said that "building oc- cupancy' will be continually evaluated." AND SO THE situation stood until last night-the coalition in the building and the administration continually evalu-. ating the situation. The administration knew that it could not justify evicting people who were us- ing North Hall for a good purpose, and were maintaining it in good condition. However, the administration anticipated that the coalition would be unable to keep the building in decent repair-with- out trashing. When it became obvious that there was trashing and d a m a g e, the University, armed with the sword of righteousness, would proceed to evict the revolutionary tenants of North Hall. Yesterday, the administration's .prog- nostication that the coalition would be unable to prevent damage to North Hall seemed to be coming true. In spite of an official coalition position against trash- ing, sporadic outbursts did occur, includ- ing a fire on Thursday night which gut- ted a large part of the sub-basement. Although the coalition was united in its goal to occupy North Hall, differences in motives became increasingly visable, once the primary goal had been accomplished. As a result, there was no decisive plan as to what should be done with the building, and little by little, trashing and damage increased. Some people wanted to hold the build- ing strictly as a political protest, in line with other protests across the country. Others wanted to make the building a permanent day care and community cen- ter. THE COALITION, once in control of North Hall, had the unique oppor- tunity to use this building for something definite and constructive, as opposed to holding the building as a protest. A day- care center, which had already been pro- posed would have been an ideal use for the building, since the Univei'sity had claimed that there is presently no room for such a facility. If a decision to use the building as a day-care center had been made, it is al- most certain that the University would not have taken steps to forcefully discour- age such an activity, since there is room in North Hall for other activities besides ROTC. Also, the University wants to avoid unftvorable publicity and trouble that would accompany a move to ban a worth- while activity from a 1 a r g e 1 y unused building. By quarreling among themselves, the coalition failed to a c h i e v e anything, while a concrete goal was within their grasp. But then, the entire operation was not a complete waste-playing revolution is really a lot of fun. -LINDSAY CHANEY By RICK PERLOFF THERE IS SO much happening that it's difficult to know where to start. Death is crawling out of everything: Cambodia, Kent State, Panther trials. And those who try to protest it get killed them- selves. It's absurd. Those kids in New York who try to bomb buildings get bombed instead. Oil tycoons who cheat people daily ac- cumulate millions and live comfortably. But the poor who do their best to live honestly and support a family are ignored, even hurt by the System which the tycoons help run. The poor remain poor for generations. Why be honest? Why live anyway? Who says life exceeds death? Maybe we've been had; death is where it's at. Someone told me the other day that the difference between life and death is really nothing, just the arrange- ment of our nucelic acids. That's all we are, anyway, acids; is that so sacred? WHO KNOWS? Maybe it's all just a battle between the life and death cultures. That somehow seems to paint a childish picture. Take Mayor Harris. By all reliable estimates, he's part of the Establishment, a liberal more interested in political ima- gery than revolutionary reality. Now Harris had made some mistakes. but in his speech at Hill Thursday he was hardly death. He sincerely wants a culture based on humaneness, happiness and "laughter." He honestly believes that the best change can come through the system. Maybe he's wrong, but at least he's sincere. That is more life than can be said for some of the leftists who trash for recognition. THEY'RE TRYING to portray life versus death at North Hall. The life of a day care center versus the death of ROTC. Well, okay. But there are so many issues floating around, that building: Cambodia, Kent State, Bobby Seale, ROTC, War Research, Women's, Gay Liberation, Reaching the workers. To name only a few. They're important issues, but you get the idea at North Hall that there are so many problems that you get lost in them. There was a call for a strike and it won big headlines, but then a few days later the whole thing is virtually cancelled.'Now this makes the Movement look silly; students lose faith and radicals get bored. IT'S DIFFICULT. How do you attack a System, an entire System? You can work within it, but that's depressing. You can strike it, make it stop, but you need mo- mentum and dynamics for that. Or you can go to the streets. Peaceful protests are silly; they put us all on history as opposing something, but they neither pressure leaders nor raise much conscious- ness. And violence, while effective, can be deadly. Indeed it's understandable that everyone is surounded by issues, uncertain jus where to go. Of course, Jerry Rubin says we should ignore rhetoric about goals and tactics; just "be what we must be" and live the revolution. Intriguing: Anything's legal. The revolution is the goal and the way to produce one is to be one. The laws you break are irrelevant - because anything is justified to bring about the change. SOCIETY IS BASED on the idea that it is better in the long run to obey the law than disobey it. It produces more hap- piness, etcetera. But what if the laws and the society are wrong? What if those laws and that society produce less happiness than a society without laws? Then breaking the laws is our goal. Any- thing is legal. Tempting. Yet it's like what Jeff Miller's father said, on the death of his son at Kent. The National Guard is young, he said; so are the protesters. Kids fighting kids. Lords of the Flies? What do you do? Those Guardsmen are "kids" too. One in Kent said he was anxious for his term to expire this weekend. Most of those men don't want to be in the Guard, they want to avoid the draft. It's insane: we're fight- ing our own culture, our own people. If there is a new culture. I suppose it's not as widespread as yippies believe, but it's sprouting. AT ANY RATE, there probably is a stu- dent culture. You walk on the streets of Boston and feel a cameraderie. All these people are like you: they dislike the war, racism and are encountering problems with the draft, grades and relationships. A gigantic extension of yourself? Who knows? We students are united; we feel sorry for the Kent State Four not so much because they're people, or op- pressed by the System, but because they're like us: students. We're united as much by our problems as by our virtues. Sure, the fact that we are reportedly more honest and life- searching than other generations brings out the positive among us. But the negative serves to bring us together more. The draft, working for an empty degree, struggling with grades, studying for cheap tests. Even at Harvard, which is more aca- demic than mostyschools, students don't seem to want to study. On a spring day, who studies? We're all on the Diag, the Harvard Yard, outside, growing stoned. WHY WON'T STUDENTS study? The universities are partly to blame; require- ments, grades, pressure. I was reading Sumerhill, a story of a truly free school in England, and the author mentioned that children should have time to play. That schools stifle play, curiousity; in element- ary school, play is channeled in, a 45 min- ute recess and you must only swing so high. Play is healthy; so is freedom. You control yourself and your own studies and develop unfettered and naturally. You learn what you want to learn and remember it too. But we in America haven't played; we've always worked, cranked out for the future and we're tired. We learn because we're told to learn, study because we have to. This is no way to be educated and it's little wonder we want to play for four years. Perhaps if the socialization process was changed, if we were allowed to experiment, enjoy in school, if we weren't treated as things to be taught and things to be train- ed, as things. Then maybe we'd feel in- clined to develop ourselves motivated to study. Maybe. ANYWAY, ARE WE A culture? We like to think so. when Nixon accused radicals of being bums, I felt incensed, or perhaps I just wanted to be, just wanted to feel part of the "bums" culture. Are we going to set up new places to live where we can nurture our civilization? No. We'll live in the suburbs too; there may not be defactos, but they'll be suburbs. And maybe we'll act like the suburbians now, adjust to our environment, become 8-5 men with slim brown ties who return to work each day, convinced /t h a t you can't fight city hall. Only we'll call it the Establishment or something chic. There've been other youths; I imagine the youth in the 1940 was united too; vic- tory in '45 was their Woodstock. The world was not discovered in 1950, Russell Baker noted once. * *. * IN BOSTON I MET some old h i g h school friends and wondered how much they'd changed. They'd become radical, less inhibited, more mature, but basically they were the same people. One friend said he hadn't lost his am- bitions to be president, had only "replaced them." A girl, once with short hair, now wears it high in a frizz, smokes pot and has re- jected material values. She was a cheer- leader in high school -and longed for A' Everyone must pay the costs THE UNIVERSITY administration's de- cision to contribute to the educational" costs of the children of University stu- dents living in Northwood Apartments is correct. Unfortunately, however, its deci- sion to pass the cost on to the Northwood tenants is far from correct. Clearly, the city of Ann Arbor deserves to be reimbursed for the cost of educating the children living in Northwood Apart- ments. For too long, the University has sat se- curely on hundreds of acres of tax free land. This has resulted in driving the* taxes on private property up to incredible brackets. No one would dispute that the Univer- sity has done much to enhance the life- style of Ann Arbor in terms of cultural, intellectual and athletic events. Finan- cially as well, the city is known to make substantial profits from the University fire and police expenditures as well as from parking fines. But these are of little significance to they many people who work in Ann Arbor but are unable to live here because of outrageous housing costs. THE UNIVERSITY'S decision to pass the cost of the school payment on to the Northwood tenants is far less admirable than the decision to make the payment itself. In a report released earlier this week by a committee of the Office of Housing, numerous a r g u m e n t s are presented against propping up the Northwood rent structure in order to cover the school board allotment. The report contends that if the Uni- versity sees itself as responsible for pay- ing school costs-a view which the report itself opposes-then the assessment tax -like all school taxes-should be levied on all University p r o p e r t y, including d o r m s, academic departments and the hospital. ALSO, IF THE school cost were financed by raising the rent at Northwood Apartments, the University would have the highest married-housing rates in the nation. If the administration proceeds with its plans regarding the school costs, the Uni- veristy would decrease rather than in- crease the amount of low cost housing available at a time when low cost housing is badly needed. The University, more than a n y o n e, should be aware of the financial obliga- tion that must be incurred by all mem- bers of community. It is encouraging that the University is facing up to its respon- sibility to the Ann Arbor community. It must not, however, pass this burden on to only a portion of the University com- munity. -ANITA WETTERSTROEM By IRWIN J. GOLDSTEIN Daily Guest Writer (EDITOR'S NOTE: The author is an associate professor in the biological chemistry department.) FOR THE FIRST TIME in his- tory man is making massive use of chemicals to defoliate and kill large stretches of forests and jungles, and to destroy food crops. During the past 8 years the U.S. has defoliated over 5 million acres of Vietnamese countryside. This would be equivalent to spraying herbicides on the entire states of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illi- nois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. Over 500,000 acres of crops have also been destroyed in an effort to deprive the Viet Cong of food. But it isn't the guerrillas who are suffering. It is, as usual, the most susceptible segment of the popu- lation - the very young, the old and the sick. In fact, Jean Mayer, a wellknown Harvard nutrition- ist, who has studied the situation h a s accused us of deliberately waging war by starvation. Our defoliation program is rap- idly and seriously upsetting the intricate web of relationships that efoliation is destroying exist between plant and animal life, the soil and the water. Birds and wildlife are deserting the for- ests. In short, we are converting millions of acres of t h e once- beautiful country of Vietnam into a chemical wasteland. This action I believe is immoral, indefensible. Legally it is a fla- grant violation of the 1925 Ge- neva Protocol which prohibits the use in war of all "asphyxiating, poisonous and other gases and all analogous liquids, materials or de- vices and of biological warfare." PRESIDENT NIXON recently declared that the U.S. was re- nouncing biological warfare and that he would resubmit the 1925 Geneva Protocol to the Senate for its ratification. Now the White House and Pentagon announce that this treaty did not apply to the chemical herbicides and irri- tant gases which we are using in Vietnam. Even though the major- ity of legal and scientific opinion around the world considers that it does. To underscore this point, a group of 21 nonaligned states at the United Nations General As- sembly introduced a resolution de- daring that the use in war of all toxic chemical agents directed at man, animals or plants is con- trary to the Geneva protocol. The resolution was passed by a vote of 80-3, with only Portugal, Australia and the U.S. in oppo- sition. THE CHEMICALS used in our defoliation program bear the de- ceptively cheerful designations Agent Orange, Agent Blue, Agent White and Agent Purple. The C-123 aircraft which do the defoliation each carry a 1000 gallon tank of defoliant. T h e y fly about 150 feet a b o v e the ground and spray at a rate of 3 gallon per acre which is, depend- ing on the herbicide, 7-15 times the concentration recommended for use in the U.S. When the low- flying aircraft come under attack from ground fire they drop their 1000 gallon load in seconds and fly away. This h a s resulted in heavy local contamination of rice patties and water supplies. But now,rwhen scientists be- gan to express concern over the effects of the defoliation program, the State Department and Penta- gon reply "The herbicides used are nontoxic and not dangerous to man or animal life. The land is not affected for future use." It is already abundantly clear that the State Department was wrong on both counts. FRED TSCHIRLEY, Assistant Chief of the Corps Protection Branch of the USDA, w e n t to Vietnam to assess t h e ecologic consequences of the defoliation and crop destruction program in Vietnam. He found that some kinds of plant associations are not merely defoliated but are killed. In the Rung Sat area, southeast of Sai- gon, 100,000 acres of Mangrove trees have been sprayed at least once. Each application of the de- foliant, Agent Orange, killed 90- 100 per cent of these trees. Some Mangrove forests had been spray- ed as early as 1961 and h a v e shown no substantial signs of re- covery. It takes a minimum of 20 by bamboo. Bamboo is ti plant to colonize any ar the last to leave. You ca bamboo with herbicides. T reported that the prese bamboo was t h e most c feature of the deciduous fo Vietnam that had been def Ecologists have known long time that the Ma lining estuaries furnish on most important evological for the completion of t cycle of certain shellfish ar ratory fish. If these plan munities are not in al state, secondary effects whole interlocked web of isms are bound to occur. years ahead, the Viet sources of protein in the f fish and shellfish may be reduced. DANGER TO THE soil other possible consequence tensive defoliation. Soil is dead. inert mass but rathe brant living community. knock the leaves off tree twice or three times you the quality of t h e soil. tropical soils - and it ha estimated that in Vietnam 50 per cent of all the soils to this category - are late that is, they may be irre' converted to rock as a re the deprivation of organic: If you deprive trees of leap photosynthesis stops, organ ter in the soil declines. Th ural brick making proces occur on a very extensiv It is to be emphasized th brick is irreversibly harde cannot be made back into ALTHOUGH IT HAS r tracted great attention, th age caused by B-52 bomb artillery raids is of consi ecological significance. It timated that there are in Vietnam, a minimum of 5 bomb craters, 30 ft. deep; ft. in diameter. As one Viet put it. we are making thec look like the surface of the Most of these holes are fill( water even late in the dry similar community at Harvard football games. Both people were fundamentally t h e same, they had only channeled themselves into different areas. The guy was still in- dependent, and egotistical, and perhaps more cynical. The girl was still happy-go- lucky, unpressured, only more so., Now they wear wire-rimmed glasses in- stead of regular one and smoke pot in- stead of drinking Scotch. Do we ever really change; perhaps a significant change would be for an in- troverted country boy to.dedicate him- self to other people, to work for the move- ment. But that rarely happens. * * * Cultures are so separated, yet so near. Sorority women pass freaks and live next to them. And at MIT, a talk with the ex- ecutive director of the Draper Labs, which does research for MIRV and Poseidon Mis- siles, reveals he is worlds apart from stu- dents like me. He had done nothing immoral in his life, he said, and regarded his work.as an- other job. What the students were saying is light years' away,though they have ap- parently spoken feet away from him on occasion. He even jokes about the corrupt system. And just think, if these engineers could use their intelligence for the Movement or to improve society . . . But that's like par- ents saying "if these hippies would only work for society . . " It's the same prob- lem: conformity to a norm, working for the greatest good. It's always the same universal problem: relating to people, developing yourself, ul- timately happiness. Only t h e situations change. Maybe there are no answers; who knows if a new culture will develop, whether we can be motivated to study, if life is sacred. Perhaps we should just assume affirma- tives, throw up our hands'and enjoy. Vietnam he first ON FRIDAY NIGHT at the En- ea and act Town Meeting, Ted Dohne, n't kill president of Dow Chemical Com-,w schirley pany, was asked to comment on nce of reports that a herbicide used in onstant Agent Orange causes b iir t h de- rests in fects, foliated. These reports stem from studies for a carried out by the Bionetics Re- .ngroves search Labs. For over six months e of the the report of this study commis-# n iches sioned by t h eNational Cancer the life Institute to protect the public nd mig- against chemicals producing can- t com- cer and birth defects w a s un- healthy available. *It was classified confi- on t dential and was unavailable not organ- only to scientists outside the gov- In th4 enment, but many inside as well. namese form of FOR THE PAST several months gravely there have been newspaper stories about deformed South Vietnamese babies. Many of these reports n-come from heavily sprayed areas sof ex- and the peasants seem to sense not a that there is a relationship be- r a vi- tween their deformed babies and If you the heavy spraying and jetison- s once, ing of herbicide. change Certain Clement Markert, well-known as beenYale embryologist, said that the 1sup to chemical in Agent Orange poses fall in- "an unacceptable risk" to the peo- rizable; ple of Vietnam. He added that0 versibly even if the heavy concentrations sult of used did not cause overt malfor- matter. mations in children, they could ves and lead to hidden malformations ic mat- such as a lessening of brain ca- is nat- pacity. ss may e scale. IN SUMMARY, our program of at this defoliation and c r o p killing in ned; it Vietnam has brought terrible suf- soil. fering to the Vietnamese people, We have exposed them to massive not at- quantities of poisonous substances e dam- whose long range effects are still er and not known. We have caused large derable portions of t h e population, al- 4 is es- ready in a weakened condition South from the ravages of war, further million misery by depriving them of food. and 45 We have caused massive disloca- namese tion of the population by destroy- country ing their farms. Furthermore, this moon. policy has resulted in substantial ed with and almost certain permanent al- season. teration to the land and its plant WE*, THE REGENTS, ARE PART OF? A C%R QPT E5TA8LISHM&MT WINI HAS AS ITS GOALIS SUBJUGR'fli4N OF THE WO9RDANDR SNOW MoV~LS FoRLl.. OUR TASK IS TO KEEP Svpp-I ED WITl{ 50 THAPT THE COt9'L6> AND IN TURN OUR F ECONOMy Wfl4 13EUNDISTURBED JL FUR&L SZSLSSSU LPLI&