4 OPINION Page 4 Thursday, February 7, 1985 The Michigan Daily I be M ctdgan 1Bat1 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan The Draft: Resist or conform Vol. XCV, No.106 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board A public document* MORE THAN any other type of institution, a university depends upon the exchange of ideas to for- mulate a responsible whole. With that notion in mind, the ad- ministration's actions concerning associate vice-president Niara Sudarkasa's report on minority recruitment and retention seem par- ticularly disturbing. The first part of Sudarkasa's report-dealing with undergraduate enrollment-was originally to have been completed in October, yet as recently as two weeks ago she claimed it was not yet finished. Two remaining parts to the report are planned, but she has not announced dates for their com- pletion yet. MSA, the alumni association, the NAACP, the Council of Minority Con- cerns, and the Daily have requested copies of the report, but as yet the only access that has been granted to anybody outside the administration has been viewing opportunities for MSA and CMC officials. Those viewings must take place within Sudarkasa's office and are insufficient in light of reports that the document is over 200 pages long. Administration officials claim they are correct in holding back the report because it is an internal communique designed strictly for application toward a final administration proposal. The document is a commissioned report by a high-level University of- ficial, however, and it concerns an issue directly affecting the University community. Minority enrollment is a concern of the entire community. In the 1970's that concern manifested itself through the actions of the Black Action Movement which extracted a promise of 10 percent black enrollment from the administration. In more recent years, the revival of the Black Student Union and the creation of Sudarkasa's position demonstrate that concern con- tinues. In addition, the Sudarkasa report could alter the University's request to the state for student financial aid. Ac- cording to Roderick Linzie, MSA's minority recruitment researcher, the report calls for increases in financial aid to minority students. Any such aid increase could affect state government reaction to the proposal and thus would directly affect the significant part of the University community that receives financial aid. Those people have a right to know what the ad- ministration is considering. Finally, the administration's claim that the report is not yet finished is simply unconvincing. It is currently complete enough to allow MSA and CMC officials to view it, but more im- portantly, a report of its nature should be made available to the public at its earliest stages. If the report is indeed incomplete then it will either require additional ideas or parts of it will be removed. If it still requires new ideas, then the community at large is a vital source for those ideas. If parts of the report are to be removed, then the community should have the right to be aware of those parts that were con- sidered and dropped. Yesterday, MSA and the Daily filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the report. An issue of the magnitude of minority recruitment and retention is one that should receive input from all parts of the community and not just from high-ranking ad- ministrators. The following dialogue is the second part of a conversation that Jerry Markon had with Paul Jacob last week after Jacob ad- dressed a meeting of the Ann Arbor Libertarian League at Angell Hall. Jacob, a member of the Libertarian Par- ty, is a vehement opponent of draft registration. He was arrested by FBI agents last December and charged with "willfully failing to register. " His trial has been scheduled for May 6. Topics covered in the first part of their conver- sation, printed in yesterday's Daily, in- cluded the reasons for Jacobs' opposition to the draft-which he called "slavery "-and his belief that the United States should withdraw its troops from Europe and all other global commitmen- ts. Dialogue t, D: Do you think Western Europe could stand up alone against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe? J: I think it could. If you look at the Gross National Products' of Western Europe com- pared to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the debate becomes a little more weighted on our side. D: What about World War II? If America hadn't got involved then, all of Europe might very well have a swastika hanging over it today. J: Well, we went over there when Hitler declared war on us, and I don't think we should have until they declared war on us-it wasn't our war. I have nothing but respect for any American who had the courage and the foresight to go over to Europe and fight against Hitler before we declared war. I'm opposed to the government forcing them to do it. People who today go over to Afganistan and fight against the Russians-I support them tremendously. But I don't think the U.S. government should be forcing people to serve in the military. If they object to killing, if they don't want to be in the military, if they think it's an unjust war...I don't think we want those people in the military. Daily: Let's talk about the Libertarian par- ty. Can you describe some of the party's positions, and how it helped shape your feelings about the draft? Paul Jacob: Our position is that we need a free market at home, less government inter- vention in the economy, lower taxes, less government control... basically laissez faire. And not the type of corporate statism that we call free enterprise today. Not where you have a few companies using the army over- seas to control markets, but a true free- market system where people get no subsidy from the government. It's individuals being free to do whatever they feel is right without constraint from government, provided that they don't injure or defraud their neighbor. If you're in your house smoking a marijuana cigarette, you're not hurting anyone else. If you get in your car and drive out in the streets smoking marijuana or drinking beer then I think that's a real harm. D: But wouldn't such a system make the law somewhat vague and difficult to apply to each individual case? J: The point I'm trying to make is that there shouldn't be a crime that doesn't have a victim. Society shouldn't be deciding morality for everyone, the majority shouldn't be telling the minority how to live, how to worship god or not worship god, how to eat, what to read.. . There have been books cen- sored in the United States. Liberatrians are against that. There have been films cen- sored; the drug laws we see as not only coun- terproductive and causing more crime, but also fundamentally wrong because you don't have the right to tell someone else what to do. We certainly don't believe you have the right to take enough drugs to go crazy and to go out on the town and smash things, and to do something dangerous like get behind the wheel of a car. We do believe in responsibility and that you have the responsibility not to harm your neighbor and that it's no excuse to say you were high on drugs. The same is true with prostitution. We don't see these as crimes. D: How can you legally define "harming your neighbor?" J: I think it's obvious that if your next-door neighbor is in his house taking drugs, then there's no real qualitative harm being done to you. If, on the other hand, he pulls your bushes out of your yard and carries them across to his, he's stealing something. He's causing a real harm. Murder is a crime, rape is a crime. . . We believe in full civil liber- ties-that you have the right to do anything you want, provided you don't injure someone else. Another thing we believe is that this country should not be intervening throughout the world. Let's trade with our neighbors, but let's not try to control their internal affairs; let's not send our soldiers out to try and police and baby-sit the rest of the world. If we're going to change the rest of the world, let's do it by educating them. Let's do it by example, let's not do it by force. D: Can you describe the circumstances that led up to your arrest? J: I went to Westminster College in 1979, and because of discussions with other studen- ts, I decided to join the Libertarian party. That year we formed a young Libertarian group on a campus, and we started working on the draft issue, because even then there were bills for national service and for a military draft before Congress. Then, I left Westminster, and went back to Little Rock Arkansas, where I reorganized the Liber- tarian party. It had become pretty stagnant, but I soon got it rolling again. I became the chairman in 1980, and in 1981, when I was still chairman, we had a demonstration, in Little Rock, against the draft. As chairman, I spoke out against the draft. I basically said that I thought it was unjust and un-American. When I was directly asked by members of the media whether I had registered, I said that I couldn't in good conscience and I urged other people not to register. Six months later, I got a threatening letter from the Selective Ser- vice, saying basically to register or face prosecution. I decided that since I couldn't register, I had better things to do than face a court and possible prison, so I left Arkansas on July 4,1981, and went underground. D: Can you talk about what you did when you were underground? J: Well, at that point I wasn't indicted yet so I can talk about pretty much anything I did without getting anyone in trouble. I went to Washington and talked with Students for a Libertarian Society and I traveled to other parts of the country and spoke with Liber- tarians and various college groups. I was in- dicted in 1982, but I didn't turn myself in. In December of 1983 I returned to Little Rock, where my wife and I were expecting our first child. I lived there for a year without being apprehended. I had basically decided to live where I wanted to and how I wanted to, and that if they were going to come take away my freedom and arrest me then they would have to do it. But I wasn't going to turn myself in. D: What about your arrest? J: I was arrested in December of 1984. They showed up at the door at the same time a friend showed up in the driveway so I was thinking it was a friend-but it was them. There were 3 FBI agents, and I was handcuf- fed and held overnight and denied bail for 24 hours. Then I was granted a $75,000 property bond, for which my parents basically put up their house. I was released on December 7 and I sometimes wonder if they didn't time it to coincide with the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. D: What are you specifically being charged with, and what is the maximum penalty? J: I'm being charged with willfull failure to register. The maximum penalty is 5 years in- prison and a $10,000 fine. No one yet, I don't think, has been given the maximum sentence. D: What are your feelings about possibly going to prison? J: Well, I don't want to go. I've decided that I'm not going to comply with what I think is a very dangerous program, and whatever they try to threaten me with to make me comply doesn't really matter. If they threaten me with the electric chair, then I'll reconsider. But I can't allow their threats and their punishments to intimidate me. I hope that I'm sentenced to no time served or to very little time served. If I think it's an amount of torture that I can stand, then I'll go ahead and get it over with. I'm hoping for the best and preparing for the worst, but I'll probably keep appealing. D: What are your views on the Soloman Amendment, which forbids students from getting financial aid if they don't register? J: I don't support and the Libertarian Par- ty doesn't support taking money from people who are paying taxes and giving it to people to go to school. I don't think a student has a right to expect money from the government to go to school. I also think it's scary to see how much control the military has over education. They have ROTCs all over the campuses and military research and military grants to many colleges. The fact that the colleges are helping to enforce draft registration is cer- tainly another factor that shows that the educational system and the military/in- dustrial complex are not very far separated. D: Many of the former radicals from the 1960's seem to have gone back on many of their previous views and become much closer to the status quo. Do you think this will ever happen to you? Will you ever become a Yup- pie? J: I hope not. I don't think I have the same values that some of the more famous 60's radicals had. I don't see anything wrong with owning a house or having a family. They had the view that living in a house in suburbia was a criminal offense. I think the Vietnam War was criminal, but I don't think living in suburbia is. . I'd like to increase people's freedom, but not the amount of guilt they feel. I don't think they should feel guilty for striving to have a better life. I think that freedom and peace are what's necessary to allow people to build a better life for them- selves. I don't think that's something that will change in the next 20 years. I think I'll always have that feeling, and the reason they changed and they're doing things now that they didn't once believe in is that their values were not totally correct. They were socialists and communists. I'm not a socialist or a communist. They believed in revolutions and taking actions against society because it was totally corrupt. I don't view the people living and working and trying to make it in society as corrupt-I view the people in the gover- nment as corrupt. I don't think there's anything wrong with being rich, if you earn that money fairly. So, in the end when they. ended up having to make money like everybody else, it made them look like they were selling out, whereas if I end up making some money it doesn't go against my values: it doesn't look like I sold out. Someday, I hope I will make a little. Ambassadorial reform IN THE midst of the process of selec- ting a replacement for Jeanne Kirk- patrick as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Reagan ad- ministration has taken a positive step toward reforming the position. In the past, the U.N. ambassador automatically has been considered a cabinet member. The administration has changed that part of the position, however, and so made it less of a political position and more of the ad- ministrative one that it should be. Many former U.N. ambassadors, like Sen. Daniel Moynihan, have used the position as a springboard to higher office. Because they hold cabinet rank, the ambassadors were frequen- tly in the press and were put under ad- ditional pressures. The chief functions of the U.N. am- bassador are communication and compromise. Both of those functions should be easier without the additional pressures inherent in a cabinet position. In recent months the U.S. has ap- peared increasingly isolationist with its pullout from -UNESCO and its with- drawal from the World Court over a case brought against it by the Nicaraguan government. Therefore, the new U.N. ambassador must demonstrate to the world that the U.S. remains intent on establishing inter- national networks of communication and exchange. Vernon Walters, the man proposed by the administration to fill the position, appears to be a good choice. He has had a long, quiet career in foreign relations and has established a reputation as a patient administrator. In addition, he is reported to be fluent in nine languages-an ideal qualification for such a post. The Reagan administration's decision to eliminate the cabinet status associated with the U.N. ambassador is a sound move. With diminished political pressure, the new am- bassador ought to be able to perform his duties more effectively. Markon is a Daily staff writer. Letters Cartoon showed poor editorial choice - - -- - To the Daily: Your recent political cartoon (Daily, Jan. 31) depicting an Israeli tank leaving a family of crippled refugees standing in a decimated Lebanese street is a blatant example of yellow misin- formed journalism, unfor- tunately all too representative of The Daily's editorial policy. For over a decade, the PLO threatened civilian life in Nor- thern Israel through in- discriminate bombing and terrorist attacks. Israel tried to stem these attacks through retaliatory air strikes against PLO bases in Lebanon. Unfor- tunately, due to the massive ex- tent of the deployment of PLO forces in Lebanon, these strikes were unable to stop the aggression. The PLO had stock- niled hIsa mnts nf Soviet ar- Under International law Israel was under no obligation to wait for a cooperative Syrian-PLO at- tack against Northern Israeli towns. Article 51 of the United Nation's Charter clearly provides the basic right of a nation for self- defense. Israel's retaliatory campaign came only after numerous terrorist attacks as well as over a 1000 shellings of 23 Nor- thern Israeli settlements. As far as the accusations of killing innocent civilians, the blame lies squarely with the PLO who deliberately located their bases in refugee camps, hospitals, and other heavily populated areas. As an example of Israeli humanity, Israel drop- ped leaflets before attacks on Sidon and Tyre in order to warn the population to flee to indicated safe zones. This action was taken at the expense of military sur- prise and subsequently of Israeli lives. Your cartoonist Bering, is either grossly misinformed about Lebanon or reprehensibly biased. In either case, by printing the cartoon, you showed frighteningly poor editorial judgement. Before you jump on the bandwagon condemning Israel, take some time to avail yourselves of the facts. Do some journalistic research. Shock ef- fect journalism based on the flimsiest of propaganda and rhetoric is better left to supel market tabloids and not to allegedly respectable newspapers like the Daily. -Bob Ablove January 31 by Berke Breathed --- BLOOM COUNTY B/NKLEY! 015ASTER! n .mrARRr .vw I t5sre.JffYTO FWP 57W DALL(4AS..H'S ARM HA. 5 4V F SRIO My /'r , i