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OPINION
Tuesday, September 15, 1981
Page 4
The Michigan Daily
. ...... . . ..... . . ...........
How I spent
my summer:
Part I
There are 564 bolts in a Baltimore city jail
cell. When you'rv in one for eight hours with
nothing to do, you find ways of passing the
time.
Which brings me to Going To Jail Pointer,
#1: Never go to jail without bringing along
a good book. Papillon comes to mind as a
good choice.
Howard
Witt
the Baltimore newspaper where I worked, I
trudged up the steps to the second-floor apar-
tment I was sharing with five other student-
types.
"Howard, did you hear?" my five room-
mates screamed in unison. 'We've been
raided! We've been violated! We've been sear-
ched!"
Into my clammy hands they thrust several
important-looking papers. "Search and Seizure
Warrant," read one. "Inventory of Property
Seized," read another. "Affidavit." "Art. 27
Sect. 276-302 of the Annotated Code of
Maryland." The words all seemed so leeeegal.
AND THEN THE biggie. "Marijuana."
Pointer #2: Don't panic. Quickly review
the crimes for which the death penalty is
applicable.
I scanned the warrant. It said the police had
seized "15 Marijuana Plants" and "1 Film Con-
tainer (containing Hashish)."
John's plants. I realized the 15 marijuana
plants belonged to one of our roommates, John.
He had been sunning them out on the back fire
escape every afternoon.
I had never really given them a second
thought. After all, I was from Ann Arbor
(where marijuana is only slightly harder to get
than Band-Aids) and we were living near Johns
Hopkins University (where I assumed the
medical students regularly tested the drug for
its healing powers).
BUT SOME RESPONSIBLE neighbor had,
obviously spied the plants, assumed they
weren't poison ivy, and called the police. Who
promptly came by with a search warrant while
no one was home. Our landlord was only too
happy to let them in-we were a little behind in
our rent and were due for some harassment.
Pointer #3: Always pay your :rent on
time.
So that explained whose marijuana plants
Dick Tracy and Co. had confiscated. ''But
whose hashish did they get?" my roommates
quizzed me suspiciously. "It didn't belong to
any of us!" they pressed.
Well, it certainly wasn't mine, I told them.
Why, I hadn't even seen any hashish since my
freshman year, when I bought a little just to try
it.
UH, OH. SOME tiny little dendrite fired
across some tiny little synapse deep in 'the
memory banks of my brain. What had I done
with that eentsy, teentsy bit of hashish I had
bought?
I raced up to my room. It looked like a pack
of wild dogs, rather than a few of Baltimore's
Finest, had torn through it. Drawers emptied
onto the floor; suits pulled from hangers;
mattress upended. Zealous chaps, those
cops.
And there, on my desk, pried open with my
own Phillips screwdriver, sat the small metal
box in which I kept my checkbooks, my ear-
nings statements, my cash-and my hashish.
SO THAT'S where I'd stashed my hash
some 21/ years ago. Yes, there beneath my
cancelled checks, my old transcripts, my ,1978
MSA Personal Property Insurance Form,4ay a
Kodak Film container with an eery, weeny
clump of a dried out variant of Cannabis sativa.
Just waiting for some inquisitive police officer
to find.
Pointer #4: Never buy hashish as a
freshman and keep it until you're a senior.
Along with the official documents, the police
had left a scrawled note ordering us to call Sgt.
Buford Viars at 9 a.m.
I was, to say the least, scared. Dorothy,
we're not in Ann Arbor anymore, I told myself.
No $5 tickets for pot offenses in beautiful
Maryland (pronounced "Merlin" by the
locals). The maximum penalty is more like one
year in jail and/er a $1,000 fine.
NATURALLY, MY FIRST thought was to
escape from reality. But by now it was 1:30
a.m.-too late to hit any bars.
Pointer #5: Never have a need to get
wasted when the bars are closed and the.
police have just borrowed your hashish.
I didn't sleep too well that night. Every few
minutes, Sgt. Buford Viars, some potbellied
southern Good Ol' Boy, would march into my
nightmares, chewing on some Skoal.
"So we got us one of these here college boys,"
.he laughed, a drop of brown spittle rolling down
'his chin as one of his officers shackled my han-
ds and legs.
Tomorrow: Howard goes to jail.
The continuation of Witt's saga will ap-
pear in tomorro w's Daily. His column
normally appears every Tuesday.
Yes, I was arrested and spent eight hours of
my summer in.jail. Law-abiding (well, okay, I
do drive 65 mph on the highway), Mother-
fearing, Apple pie-eating me. Needless to say, I
was quite unprepared for the experience.
IT ALL STARTED very early on the morning
of July 10. At about 1 a.m., after a long day at
;,
Weasel
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Vol. XCI1,No.5
420 Moynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
BEFORE WE BEAK UP
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Oppression underlies
"
S adat'
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democracy'
South Africa Rugby team
A NWAR SADAT'S recent crack-
'down on his opponents is
distressing not only-for what it says of
the condition of Egyptian liberties, but
for its implications for the long-term
stability of the Egyptian state.
Last week, President Sadat was busy
defending his actions, which have in-
cluded prohibiting anti-government
activities in the nation's mosques and
churches, shutting down six
newspapers, arresting nearly 1,600
political and religiour leaders, and
depositing the patriarch of the Copts, a
small Christian sect.
Sadat gathered the foreign press
corps at the small town where he was
born and scolded them for what he
claimed was, unfair coverage of his
policies. Later in the week, Sadat's
government announced that a referen-
dum specially called by Sadat over-
whelmingly supported him.
"Democracy is flourishing in
Egypt," Sadat insists. Sadat's
diatribes and suspicious elections
aside, what seems to be flourishing in
Egypt is not so much democracy as
blatant oppression.
Certainly the strife between the Cop-
tic minority and the Islamic majority
is deplorable, but the heavy hand of
Sadat is surely worse.
If Sadat is seeking to ensure Egyp-
tian stability, he's going about it all
wrong. Sadat is .much more likely to
find real stability by allowing free and
rational discussion than by turning
radicals into quasi-martyrs by
throwing them into jail.
In the past, Sadat has been a wise
and perceptive leader, but there's one
lesson he might learn from the debacle
of his friend the Shah of Iran. Im-
prisoning one's enemies might be sim-
ple and easy, but neither it nor ser-
mons on "flourishing democracy"
necessarily ensure continued rule.
brings politics to
In diplomatic circles, American policy on
South Africa has led to a growing isolation for
the United States, not only from developing
countries, but also from its own Western
allies.
Now the controversy is spreading into spor-
ts, with a boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los
Angeles the likely result.
SOUTH AFRICA'S national rugby team,
known as the "Springbox," is scheduled to
play three matches in the United States in late
September, following a turbulent tour of New
Zealand where protesters opposing South
African racial policies have repeatedly
disrupted play.
African nations which boycotted the 1976
Montreal Games to protest New Zealand's ex-
tensive sporting ties with South Africa
already have threatened to stay away from
Los Angeles if the South African tour takes
place. A concerned U.S. Olympic Committee
has appealed to the U.S. Eastern Rugby
Union, which arranged the Springbox tour, to
withdraw its invitation. Requests have been
made to the State Department to revoke the
South African players' visas.
In the meantime, a coalition called Stop the
Apartheid Rugby Tour, made up of about 100
religious, civil rights, sports, and political
groups, is planning protests similar to those
which occurred in New Zealand. The plans
By Reed Kramer
have prompted Rugby officials in Chicago to
move the Sept. 19 game to an undisclosed
private facility..
AFTER MAYOR ED Koch canceled a per-
mit to use a New York City-owned stadium,
the Sept. 26 match was shifted to Rochester,
N.Y.; but Rochester also has canceled the
match. The largest demonstrations now are
planned for. Albany, N.Y., Springbox is
scheduled to play on Sept. 22.
Last month SART obtained documentary
evidence that the U.S. Eastern Rugby Union,
whose 1980 budget was only $4,000, had accep-
ted a $25,000 donation from a South African
businessman with close government ties. The
contribution was made in December 1980, the
same month that the union invited the
Springbox to the United States.
But U.S. Eastern Rugby Union officials
denied charges that the donation influenced
their decision and reject'the argument that
South African national sports are
discriminatory, saying the team no longer is
all white. (One player is of mixed ancestry, or
"colored," in the South African designation.)
Union officials have refused to consider scut-
tling the tour, which now seems a certainty.
SSr
r s ~*sorts
AFRICAN COUNTRIES regard the rugby
visit as an important break in the wall of in-
ternational isolation that has been thrown up"
around South African sports. The last
national athletic team from South Africa to
visit the United States was the 1978 Davis Cup
tennis entry and therrugby tour is seen as
symbolic of warmer U.S., relations with
Pretoria.
Fueling the Olympic boycott drive is the
additional frustration of having little other
means for effectively registering concern
about overall American policies, which many
Africans feel have had a devastating effect on
the continent.
Mounting South African
aggressiveness-evident especially in
military actions against neighboring states
like Angola and Mozambique-Pretoria's
refusal to surrender control over Namibia
and the continuing enforcement of apartheid
at home all are seen as consequences of an of-
ficial-attitude in Washington that shies away
from criticism and attributes virtually any
disturbance in the region to Soviet meddling:
Kramer is editor of the Durham, N. C. -
based Africa News. He wrote this article
for Pacific News Service.
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Bonzon om ics
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to mental health
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