40 OPINION Page 4 Friday, April 10, 1981 The Michigan Daily 1fie 3 id gt a n iv an Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Patriots in the wrong age Vol. XCI, No. 155 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, M148109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board F er Now for the work E VEN BEFORE THE dust settles after the Michigan Student Assembly election, President-elect Jon Feiger and his running-mate, Amy Hartmann, must begin working to uphold the ambitious platform they have built for their campaign. The two have demonstrated a willingness to tackle tough University issues; but it will take more than good intentions to create a viable student voice in budget cuts, step-up minority recruitment efforts, or improve minority counseling services. As a student on the Budget Priorities sub-committee investigating Michigan Media, Hartmann has experienced the frustrations and often the impotency of the student voice. As numerous segments of the University face dramatic cuts, MSA officials must establish and work toward developing strong, sound student input. Now, more than ever, the Univer- sity's tight financial situation calls for efficiency in every area. Feiger has said he would like to see centralization in the minority counseling and support services at the University. Not only would such a change benefit minority students who try to sort through the maze of services currently offered, it would prove cost efficient. As the cam- pus student government, MSA can work to ensure the University provides both cost efficient and beneficial coun- seling services. Feiger and Hartmann have em- phasized the need for stepped-up minority recruitment. The cry is not unfamiliar to the University; it has echoed throughout the campus for more than a decade. Identifying the problem, however, will not solve it-MSA must develop specifics to in- crease the ever-dwindling minority enrollment at the University. Unfortunately, Feiger admits he has no specific proposals. If the.Assembly and its new leader wish to have any impact on the University's minority enrollment, they must come up with concrete, reasonable recruitment proposals. Feiger and Hartmann have set high goals for themselves. We laud their in- tentions; now its time for results. At dawn on a Sunday in November 1956, a small country in Europe began to die. Although the bulk of the adult gibberish on our family radio went over my head, I was still old enough to glean a dim awareness that something was horribly wrong somewhere else in the world; that someplace far from the Coming Apart By Christopher Potter autumn-leaved security of our house and neighborhood, people were being murdered and none of us could help them. I remember listening with my father as CBS impassively relayed the Hungarian news broadcasts in Budapest: "Russian gangsters have betrayed us; they are opening fire on all of Budapest ... they have opened fire ... on everybody ... I stay open and continue with the news ... we shall inform the world about everything. We are under heavy machine gun fire .. . the Russian tanks are now in the streets." CEASELESSLY, THE Hungarian broad- caster implored the world's help: "Have you information you can pass on. .. tell me. Urgent. Urgent. I speak in the name of Premier Nagy. He asks help ... the whole people ask for help ... long live Hungary and Europe.. . any news about help? Quickly. Quickly." TWO HOURS LATER, no rescuers on the horizon, alone in a burning city, the broad- caster composed a final adieu, destined to be etched forever on the conscience of the free world: "Goodbye friends. Goodbye friends. God save our souls. The Russians are too near." We all sat in our respective dens and living rooms, helpless to do anything to reverse this far-away horror. America's moral im- perative for intervention was strangled by the priorities of internatonal politics: The Suez War was raging, our own presidential elec- tions loomed only two days away, and always the omnipotent threat of The Bomb hung like a guillotine over any idealistic imperative. To intervene militarily was to invite Doomsday; civilization had scientifically outstripped its ability to check the political brute in its midst. So Americans sat that Sunday, each in his or her private agony, as a people's will to live free was murdered. I still remember my father murmuring "terrible. .. terrible," as he listened to that nightmare broadcast. America was the mightiest nation on earth - yet the stakes had already gone far too high to sound a metaphorical cavalry charge. A QUARTER-CENTURY has passed, and the Russians are once again too near. Once more the great leviathan bullies a small neighbor whose people desire nothing more than a voice in governing themselves as they see fit. The paranoia of the Russian psyche once again runs amok: The chieftains of the most awesome military machine and land expanse in human history quake and fret because a diminutive, non-belligerent nation named Poland wants a* small measure of social and labor autonomy. What feet of clay these aging Soviets have! Do they so doubt the primacy of their own political gods? Do their private hearts tell them Lech Walesa has a point or two? Must they crush this insolence as the only means of philosophically justifying themselves for all the world to see? What an ironic blasphemy it all must seem to the Kremlin - this swirling movement spawned not by Poland's intellectuals but by the very working class Marx and Lenin deified as the inheritors of the earth. By its very nature classic Marxian dialectic cannot even concede the existence of such heresies; such unreal anomalies must be supressed, says Moscow, before their very illogic turns the world upside down. Smash the infidel! - else socialism and Mother Russia will cease to exist. AND SHOULD THE monolith once again smash the heretic what, again, can anyone else do about it? In 1956 our global preeminence was unquestioned; yet our. response to the Hungarian massacre amoun- ted to little more than verbal broadsides and a tangible (though temporary) chilling of an already glacial Cold War. In the fragmented, depolarized world of 1981, America's one-time dominance has drastically withered; yet the fact that the Soviet Union has suffered much the same fate does nothing to aid the fenced-in plight of Poland, either geographically o ideologically. If anything, the decline of bo superpowers simply adds fuel to the Soviets' determination to cling tenaciously to what they've already got. The political irony is hideous: An in- creasingly chaotic, shades-of-gray world has astonishingly produced a pure, black-and- white conflict with a cast of clear-cut good guys and bad guys going eyeball-to-eyeball. The Polish dilemma has none of the am- biguity of such "intervenable" encounters as Vietnam, El Salvador, or even of a nation- versus-nation dispute such as the Iran-Ira4 war. It's strictly a case of the big guy against the little guy, the swaggering bully versus the kid who wants to play in his own yard. The injustice of it cries out for a Hollywood-style rectification - but America can no longer embody its own mythology. NOW EVEN MORE than then, we're reduced to little more than threatening gestures: Trade embargoes, an end to arms limitation, world-wide moral vituperation, the ever-implied threat of nuclea retaliation. Such measures would, of necessity, all come after the fact. The Soviets don't have to invade Poland - they're already inside; America may rattle its sabres and howl with rage, yet we remain pathetically helpless - implanted an ocean plus a continent away from the fray. A hundred years ago it was a simple matter to initiate an unjust war: Any aspiring Caesar would issuehthe requisite bellicose statements, rev up his army and navy and cast off - and damn any far-away con- sequences. Today's world has turned smal and perilous, to the point where the imminen- ce of as just a war as any in human history will likely provoke no more than a guilt- ridden paralysis. It's no one's fault - It is the necessary albatross for an age of sudden global death. Shed a tear for the little guys, who no longer matter enough. Christopher Potter is a Daily staff writer. His column appears every Friddy. Nuclear caution imperative LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Ti~ WO YEARS AGO this month, something went wrong with the normal operation of the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, Penn. The nuclear industry lobbyists had said it couldn't happen, but it did - there was a dangerous malfunction at a nuclear power plant. The TMI accident, however unfor- tunate, served the very valuable pur- pose of alerting the Congress, the White House, and the public to the very real dangers of nuclear power. Now, two years later, there is a very real danger Americans will forget the lesson of TMI. TMI taught us that nuclear power is very fallable. The malfunction pushed us at last to scrutinize the nuclear in- dustry - to make up for past negligen- ce. Following the TMI accident, there was a backlash of stiffer federal regulations and any hope the industry clung to that "bureaucratic red tape" would be cut'was killed - at least for the time being. The TMI accident should not necessarily spur us to abandon nuclear power completely. Yet it has confir- med that nuclear power is, as Ten- nessee Valley Authority Chairman S. David Freeman said, "an inherently dangerous technology," that should be considered with the utmost restraint and caution. The Reagan administration, however, has not proven itself to be either cautious or restrained in its frenzy to hack away at federal regulations of industry. Rather, the new administration often seems to cut government guidelines and regulations with little consideration of the im- plications of the cuts. This is the careless way the administration has gone about cutting federal standards regulating the auto industry. If Reagan, having forgotten the lesson of TMI, takes this same approach to doling out "regulatory relief" to the nuclear industry the results could be disasterous. The administration should maintain the stiff standards that currently regulate the development of nuclear power, lest we sadly realize the predic- tion of Robert Cornell, a New York in- dustry analyst, who said shortly after the TMI accident, "I seriously don't think accidents in 1979 will affect decisions made between coal and nuclear plants in 1981.". Effects of word change To the Daily: Normally I wouldn't complain about the misprinting of a single word in an article I've written, but this one is important to my in- tent. In the original copy of what was printed as "Typing Male- Hating Essays," I had written not that "I'm ashamed of my maleness," but that I'm "unashamed." It might seem a trivial con- sideration, but this particular misprint interferes with the point I wanted to make - which is that being male or female, by itself, has little to do with being human. -Doug Shokes April 2 N i '9 : .. 1 i Letter policies Letters to the Daily should be typed, triple-spaced, with inch margins. All submissions must be signed by the individual author(s). Names will be withheld only in unusual circumstances. Letters may be edited for clarity, length, grammar, and spelling. W., o'Co 04 "1M4s C04TARV SX 11OLWP$-r174G CISIS MAJAGEM~st.Jr SETUlP WRKED MCbYr 1SFACe'bqMLYLASIT MOIJ4hY lIr 11 Selfimage of so many drugs around the cops By Pauline Craig don't even bother. They hassle us, chase us through the tunnel at the beach, throw us-around, and This article is second in a two- even use their billy clubs on us. part series. but not because of drugs. It's for * * * * us being in the race riots. They How do San Francisco's White tell us that if we're going to act Punks on Dope feel about them- like punks, they're going to treat selves? What are their daily lives us like punks." like? What do they want for W.P.O.D.S ARE also very into themselves and their future? their cars, Terrasina at Lincoln A group of Washington High says. "We like Chevelles, Novas, school's W.P.O.D, gather in the G.T.O.s, Chargers, Mustangs, dugout by the football field. A few Corvettes, We're high riders." of them gather wads of clay from Besides their music, dope, and the ground and roll them into lit- cars, W.P.O.D.s can also be iden-' tle balls that they throw at the tified by the clothes they wear. school, breaking a couple of win- "The boys wear ultimate der- dows and polka-dotting the walls. bys," a black poplin and SAYS SONJA: "W.P.O.D. also polyester mix jacket with a stands for 'We Party or Die.' We quilted lining and a seam across have our own style. We're not into the shoulders and back, "Ben soul, disco; only rock 'n' roll. We - Davis pants, white T-shirts or spray paint K.K.K.s and tank tops, and steel-toed combat swastikas on the school walls and boots," says Kevin. we don't drive cars that bounce. The girls have derbys abd On weekends we have 'kegers' on "Bens," too. Many wear multiple the beach. >We build a bonfire, gold chains. "We like Cherokees drink some Bud or tequila, smoke (high heeled sandals) or clogs, pot, make out, dance, talk shit, the girls' version of steeltoed -M~ cbtn A .rlanrcirtrna hnr-i'nntc, I'annen ha ,wnaan n lar White Punks These kids talk tough about sex, but they speak in general terms, and rarely refer to them- selves. "That's because most of them just talk," says Sonja, "but " there are those that do, too." "MY MOM TOOK me to Plan- ned Parenthood when I was 15 to get a diaphram," Debby says. "She said she wanted planned grandparenthood and that she wasn't ready for any gran- dchildren; maybe from my sisters - they're married - but not from me." Like sex, violence, or the poten- tial for it, plays a key imaginative - if not always an actual - role in the everyday life of W.P.O.D.s, as it does for other groups. W.P.O.D:s, however, usually defend their participation in gang fights as merely defen- sive. Brandy, a freshman at Lincoln High School, carries her pen knife to school every day in her "Bens" pocket. "But I haven't had to really use it yet," she ad- mits. DESPITE ALL THE per- miniature W.P.O.D.s in their steel-toed boots, tryin' to be bad, talkin' shit, smokin' dope or even cigarettes at age seven. They're just imitating their older sisters and brothers. They stop going to school. They're ruining it for themselves, tryin' to be cook What are they going to do, earn P minimum wage all their lives?" Most W.P.O.D.s are willing to work, they say, and are trying to find a credible way into the adult world. And despite their racism, their violence, their intolerance of other kids' cars and clothes, they say that they can see through themselves. "We know we conform," says Sonja. "We do it to be accepted, to get along, mostly becaus4 there are so few of us whites in school. We don't fight it. We're tired of being shoved around by other races and we're afraid of getting into a fight some day we can't control. We know that in a couple of years we'll probably be in college or have straight jobs where we'll have to dress -nor- mally.,We won't be able to swear U X )zN FJFlMA4#fMM