4 OPINION Page 4 Friday, October 21, 1983 The Michigan Daily Edie s tdesatn y Miga Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Stewart HEY MAN I YOU HEARD OF THlE f VE-YEAR PL I? Vol. XCIV - No. 39 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board YA1A! TMNT's WREiN IT TAKES FIVE YEARS TO GRADUATE 1 NO, NO, MAN! GEE, U oFM: S 1 MEAN BILLY VICE PRESIDENT FRYE'S FIVE-YEAR TOOK FIVE YEARS PLAN J1To GRADUATE'? i$ Nop Martin Luther King Day The right step forward : f, -l jr z. W HEN PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan signs the bill the civil rights movement will have its day - its long, long overdue day. The impor- tance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s day is that it celebrates the progress King's movement made and will continue to make. It celebrates the strength of this nation - that change for the better is more than possible. National holidays are and should be ladden with symbolism. All nine current national holidays are, in- cluding the two that are specifically named for individuals. George Washington's day is as much a salute to the nation's first president as a salute to the presidency and to the ideals of Washington's time. Indeed,in several states Washington's birthday is celebrated as President's Day or Washington-Lincoln Day. Likewise, Columbus Day celebrates the discovery of the New World and its promise. um'S the' 984 HERE we come. The Reagan administration scored againsthis week in its all-out effort to stifle security leaks, even it if means using Orwellian tactics to track them down. A Justice Department official, said earlier this week that it would be en- tirely appropriate for federal agencies to randomly select employees for lie detector tests, even when there is no evidence of a security breach. Em- ployees who refused to take the tests would not be given access to classified information. In this federal government muscle flexing game, it appears that the Reagan administration has the bases loaded and are just waiting to drive in the winning run. The administration led off with a radical new secrecy agreement which more than 100,000 officials are scheduled to sign. Those officials must agree to have federal officials review any book, article, speech, or other material they write about intelligence activities. Last March the runners advanced with President Reagan's order for ex- tensive use of polygraph tests in federal agencies. Those tests, however, were only to investigate known security leaks. L So will Martin Luther King, Jr. Day champion the fight against discrimination and the contributions blacks and other minorities have made. and will make to the success of the United States. The day honors the man and his dream, but only because the dream is shared by so many... Perhaps this honor would have come earlier had the mistakes of King's op- ponents not happened. The FBI wire taps and smear campaigns aimed at discrediting King should not have been a barrier preventing the proper celebration of the civil rights movement. Those illegal activities against King only fueled the fire of the Jesse Helmses of the world who are so insensitive and opposed to the ideals King represented. King's day is another step - a sym- bolic step- toward reaching the goal of his dream: that his children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. vord in 1984 This week's Justice Department ruling significantly expands that policy. What is frightening is the ease and decisiveness with which officials can now use these indecisive tests. During the same congressional hearing as the Justice Department statement, a congressional researcthoffice released a study which seriously doubted the ability of polygraph tests to detect lies in these situations. In fact, the reliability of polygraph tests has long been dubious, even under the best circumstances. Now, despite considerable evidence that the tests are unreliable, federal of- ficials claim the right to use them whenever and wherever they please, and without the slightest provocation. Are these precautions worth the relatively small gains in national security? Or are federal ad- ministrators so afraid of the Soviet Union that they have to use Soviet. methods to quell their fears, as one former federal official said at the hearing? A comparatively open government may be one of the longest running American traditions, but President Reagan seems to be preparing to run under the "Big Brother" banner in 1984. WRONG, MAN!... IT'S ABOUT, LAKE, AMS AND LK CUTTING PROGRAMS, AND LKE, ThE ENP OF LIBERAL EDUCATION ITSgLF1 i wows AND YOURE PART OF IT, MANI IYOU GOTTA' UO gWE- THING I; YOU' RE PART OF THE FIVE- yAgA PLAN 1 1 * s " LL r A 'ft I GOLIIY, wE' DOE~S THAT W~AH wE wo TIME? 1 'N'T 4 .. .. LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Dean defends School of Education a' To the Daily: The editorial applauding the 40 percent cut for the education school ("Education school: 40 percent cut necessary," Daily, September 22) is, of course, a matter of opinion. We in the education school differ, but we are nevertheless working to put into action the budget reductions recommended to the regents. What is not a matter of opinion is the assertion in the third paragraph of the editorial that the School of Education is not ranked nationally among other education schools. Every nationally recognized poll in the last 15 years has placed the Waffling. on Watt To the Daily: Sunday you ran an article, "Watt honored in Forks, Wash." (Daily October 16), describing an event, and quoting individuals at that event who support or suppor- ted James Watt. But why? Both Friday's and Saturday's (Oc- tober 14 and 15) paper ran with rather rude and demeaning car- toons depicting Watt as a buffoon whose idiosyncrasities have him goshing frogs, pulling the legs off funny little bugs, and shovelling cowpies. Should I infer, as a daily Daily reader, incredulity?; that like James Watt those supporters in Forks,_ Wash, are buffoon's who goosh frogs, pull legs off fun- ny little bugs, and shovel cowpies. In short some editorial constancy is wanting. More importantly though I am disappointed that perhaps the final word we have of James Watt via the Daily is one of support for his environmental policies. As offensive and insensitive as Mr. Watt's comments regarding women, blacks, Jews, and crip- ples were, his greater offense was toward our environment and the management of our natural resources. As secretary of the in- terior, Mr. Watt fostered what might be described simply as laissez-faire industrial ex- ploitation embellished with token concessions for those ethically and ecologically opposed to the systematic denuding of the ear- th/us.* As Mr. Watt leaves the Department of the Interior we should not be musing about what he did, does, or may do with fun- ny little bugs; but thinking and working on what we need to do to ensure a clean environment and adequate resources in the future. - Blair Tily October 17 We encourage our readers to use this space to discuss and school among the top 10 or 15 of the more than 800 colleges of education in the United States. The most recent of these studies appeared just last spring in the American Educational Research Journal. It ranked us 14th in overall research produc- tivity and10th most improved since 1975. The distinction of a national ranking is an honor we have shared in the past with many University departments. Despite a 40 percent budget cut, we are determined to make the School of Education even better in the future. We understand the Daily's view that when enrollment drops, a school's budget should be cut, and when enrollment increases, a school should have money to hire new faculty. However, the School of Education can remember times, during the tremendous teacher shortage of the 70s, when our enrollment increased without any increase in faculty. The for- mula seems to apply only on the down side: Don't increase when times are good but cut when times are bad. I hope that the Daily will be consistent when other schools ex- perience such enrollment declines. We are not as sanguine about using enrollment as a han- dy index for budget increases and decreases. - Prof. Carl F. Berger October 11 Berger is the dean of the School of Education. _ ..! Blacks' fears overblown To the Daily:- I am writing to strongly protest the sensationalism and misrepresentation that charac- terized your October 11th story ("Firings, Resignations Alarm. 'U' Blacks,") which I saw for the first time yesterday. Not only did your story fail to demonstrate the "alarm" referred to in the headline, but it seemed designed to create "alarm" even if little or none existed. Certainly I did not convey to your reporter any sense of "alarm" on my part. In fact, my expression of "concern" was explicitly linked to the general issue of Black faculty and staff recruitment and.retention rather than to specific case(s) in point, about which I declined to com- ment. My remarks quoted in the Daily were reported in a context that completely misrepresented the sense of my conversation with the reporter. This is not the first time one of your reporters has misrepresented a conversation with me, but-it is likely to be the last time one of them will have an opportunity to do so. - Niara Sudarkas4 October 1 Editor's note: Due to an editing error, Prof. Sudarkasa's comment that she had no specific knowledge of circum- stances surrounding the recent susjnsions and resignations was eliminated from the story. The Daily regrets the error. U' treated director cruelly 4 Editor's note: The following is a letter sent to University President Harold Shapiro. Dear Mr. Shapiro: I am a systems analyst at RCA Cyclix Communications Network in Memphis, Tenn. I am also on the board of directors of the Mid- South Peace and Justice Center. At the University of Michigan I was a James B. Angell Scholar in 1980. That same year I received a "Student Achievement" award for community service. During the process of preparing for careers, I and hun- dreds of other University studen- ts had the advantage of having our education expand beyond the narrow constraints of Frieze Building classrooms and Angell Hall lecture rooms. My education included . working with and becoming a part of the lives of the people in the Pontiac Heights, HiKone, and Maple Road housing projects in Ann Arbor and the Grove Street projects in Ypsilan- ti. We fed, taught, and learned from children who were poor and poorly educated yet lived in the shadow of a "Great University." The Community Services Depar- tment was our link to these children, and the means through which I received a more multi- dimensional education. When I first attended the University in 1970, Project Com- munity was essentially Tom Moorehead. At that time, we students doing work in the com- munity received no credit hours, work-study pay, or any other support from the University..All we could really count on was the full, tireless support of Mr. Moorehead - who made his of-. fice our office and meeting place. We called on him before dawn if vehicles wouldn't start or doors were locked. We called him nights and weekends when sup- plies were low or problems arose. We saw him as our advocate, and the advocate of the community at the University. He was not only concerned with our projects and the people our projects touched, he was also deeply concerned about us, our personal growth and development. When I returned to the Univer- sity in 1978, community services had grown and diversified tremendously. But I found that Mr. Moorhead was still at the center of the activities, still providing the same tireless sup- port and personal concern. As an officer in the Black Student Union during two decades at the University, I have registered my strong disapproval of several policies of the Univer- sity - investing in corporations operating in South Africa, refusing to enroll a fair propor- tion of black students, refusing to bring in an adequate number of black instructors and grant them tenure, etc. Your ouster of Tom Moorehead is the most crass, outrageous ac- tion of your administrationrin many years, and is the one that personally hurts me the most I'm sure you've gone to great lengths to secure a rationale to "justify" this action, bel whatever it is it can't negate1' years of trying to bridge a widening gap between a univer- sity for the "elite" and an im- poverished community. I, and others like me, received recognition and awards for our work with community services - Mr. Moorehead stayed quietly in the background. Now I see slan derous charges against Mr 4 Moorehead making headlines - while Mr. Moorehead is forced to quietly resign. I enclosed the plaque that Vice President for Student Affairs Henry Johnson presented me for "outstanding contributions" to the community and the letter from Mr. Johnson that accom- panied it. I believe you deserve special recognition for the cruel and disrespectful way of ending4 the career of the only Community Services director the University has ever had. I only wish I had a duplicate to present to Mr. Johnson. - Randolph Potts Memphis, Tenn. October 16 BLOM COUNTY by Berke Breathed .::. :: . . . .:>ti. ......... :.> -> <.2 :.:. :. 9 1 I I I I