4 OPINION_ ".ge 4 Monday, December 7, 1987 The Michigan Daily 4 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan CIA crimes need protest Vol. XCVIII, No. 61 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. Recru it -more minorities LAST THURSDAY, the University Admissions Department sponsored a symposium to encourage qualified minorities from southeastern Michi- gan to come to the University. While the program will attract some minori- ties, the administration must do more Ito increase minority enrollment. The same program has been taking place annually for over 10 years. Though this program is worthwhile, the University can only fulfill the promises it made following anti- racism protests last spring by devel- oping new programs. The small in- crease in minority enrollment recorded this year indicates that more needs to be done. The University should not just cen- ter its efforts in the southeastern Michigan area, as it has done for the past several years. Following last spring's protests, the University set a goal of 10 percent Black enrollment. To achieve diversity, the University should recruit throughout the broadest possible geographic area within Michigan. For last week's function, the Ad- missions Office invited over 450 of the top minority high school seniors, based on their grades and standard- ized test scores of whom 110 attended. The criteria used by which the Uni- versity judges its applicants are inad- equate. Many educational experts re- gard SAT scores as biased against Blacks whose social and educational background do not prepare them for the tests. Both grades and SATs are racist and classist standards because they discriminate against low-income fam- ilies, both inner-city and rural, whose children do not receive quality schooling. This is another reason, aside from the morality of passing the buck, that a strategy of getting high schools that use racist and classist standards to improve the applicant pool will not work to improve the representation of the underprivileged at the University. An individual's SAT scores and grade point average should not be factors for determining admission to the University. Students who can contribute to the University and their communities are the ones who belong here, not necessarily the ones with the high grade point averages. Also, after minority students do en- roll, the University should do more to be a hospitable place for the under- privileged. The transition from a mediocre high school to a demanding institution like the University can be tough, and if a minority student has trouble, it does not mean the student is not qualified to be here. The University should provide tu- tors, as well as other special pro- grams, to help reduce the drop-out rate of minorities. The administration definitely must do more to get minorities to come to the University. A lot of promises have been made; it's time to see re- sults. By Phillis Engelbert On Wednesday, Nov. 25, the Latin American Solidarity Committee protested the presence of the CIA at the University of Michigan. The confrontation, however, soon turned into one between police and campus security forces and protesters. At one point, protester Harold Marcuse was kicked in the groin by a campus security guard. Protesters who witnessed the assault, immediately demanded that campus security guard, Robert Patrick, be charged. In retaliation for Harold's insistence on pressing charges, police and campus security manufactured charges of assault against Harold. Charging a victimized protester with assault is a common tactic used by the police to justify police abuse. In similar incidents in the past, the charge against the protester has been dropped in return for charges against the security guard being dropped by the protester. It's ironic that while defending the terrorist CIA, police and campus security turned to violence. Police and campus security should be investigated for conspiracy in their retaliatory measures, which are intended to deny Harold's civil rights to press assault charges This incident once again raises the issue of the need for a civilian board to review police actions. It also indicates that the creation of an oppressive climate on campus may result if the proposal to arm campus security forces is passed. While it's important to bring attention to the abuse of power by police forces, the real issue, the crimes of the CIA, has been all but ignored in the press. Here I would like to summarize the events which led to our protest and clarify our reasons for protesting. First, this was a rather odd time for the CIA to show its face on campus. The organization's reputation has suffered greatly, recently. The revelations of the Contragate report highlighted some of the CIA's illegal and immoral undertakings in Central America. It is also interesting that the CIA chose the day before Thanksgiving, when most students had already left for home, to come. Maybe they thought their visit would slip by unnoticed. Maybe they thought there would not be enough students around to organize a protest. The CIA prefers to come out only when they think it's safe - like so many termites hiding from the light. Phillis Engelbert is writing for the Latin American Solidarity Committee. It's also interesting that the CIA decided to 1980, President Carter authorized the CIA to return at all, given their history of pass funds to anti-Sandinista labor, press, attempting to recruit on this campus. and political organizations - an operation After repeated protests over their presence resembling the agency's destabilization on campus, the CIA chose not to include the campaign against the socialist government University of Michigan on their recruitment of Salvador Allende a decade earlier." (p. 19) circuit, last year. In October, 1984, the CIA There are many tactics the CIA has was "placed on trial" for its crimes against employed in Nicaragua to, in the word's of humanity, by a large group of protesters. ex-CIA Director William Casey, "disrupt the They were "found guilty" and left. The internal peace and economic stability of a following year, the CIA returned. 26 people small country." Tactics such as mining were arrested over two days and brought Nicaragua's harbors, generating much attention to the terrorist activities of disinformation, and publishing a terrorist the CIA. The CIA needed another reminder manual for contras which describes how tc that they are not welcome here! carry out political assassinations, have been We at the University of Michigan do not used by the CIA to try to make the stand alone in our opposition to the CIA. To Sandinistas "cry Uncle" (in the words of one the contrary, we are but one link in a long famous ex-Hollywood cowboy.) R chain of activist groups at universities across What do the policies of the CIA in sucl the country. To give a few examples, in the countries as Guatemala, Chile, an4 fall of 1986, the CIA was protested at Nicaragua, have in common, and what dq University of Wisconsin, Madison. Police they mean for the average person in thos0 used tear gas to break up the protest. countries? In each of those countries theret Around the same time, 15, including Amy had been a mass movement which instated a Carter and Abbie Hoffman were arrested at government that responded to the people's U-Mass, Amherst during an anti-CIA needs. This entailed a redistribution o1 protest. On April 27 of this year, 183 were resources so as to benefit the poor majority arrested while protesting the CIA's crimes at of people. The CIA, in each case, worked to the CIA Headquarters in Virginia. And most subvert the will of the people and to place| recently, in the last three weeks, over 80 the power in the hands of those sympathetid people have been arrested at anti-CIA to U.S. business and military interests. The protests. These protests have taken place in CIA works to crush any hopes impoverished Santa Barbara, California; Springfield, Latin Americans may have to create a better Massachusetts; and Burlington, Vermont. life for themselves. The CIA came to campus seeking young We hear the words: "terror," "torture," recruits to carry out their policies of terror and torture around the world. We came oppression," but what do they really mean? out to protest the CIA because of the To those in the third world who are suffering the CIA has inflicted on thousands victimized by the CIA's policies, it means around the world, in our name. In 1954 the the violence of watching one's children die CIA backed a coup to overthrow President of hunger. It means the oppression imposed Arbenz in Guatemala. In 1973 the CIA by a vicious military and the fear to spear destabilized and crushed the Allende outdagainst the oppression, as in Guatemala government in Chile. 1979 the CIA created and El Salvador. It means facing the terrorist contra force aimed to topple the unemployment and hunger with the new Sandinista revolutionary government of knowledge that the majority of your gw Sndii t re lui o teru scountry's land is owned by foreign Nicaragua. According to Peter Kornbluh's cutysln sondb oeg new book, Nicaragua: The Price of corporations which produce cash crops. It Intervention, means keeping your eyes fixed on the hills "Even as FSLN fighters joined the all night, in anticipation of another contra EpntaousFel tighter tedafteattack and it means the recurring nightmare spontaneous celebrations that erupted after of your son being murdered and your Somoza's departure, the United States began daughter being raped before your eyes by the setting the stage for a counterrevolution. O contra, as is the case for one peasant woman July 19, U.S. operatives mounted a I came to know in Nicaragua. ciandestUe mission to evacuate commanaers of the Nicaraguan National Guard who had been unable to flee Nicaragua. Aboard a DC- 8 disguised as a Red Cross plane, an American known as "Bill Furillo" airlifted dozens of Guardsmen and their families to Miami wherenthey could reorganize to renew their fight against the Sandinistas. In late That is why we protest when the CIA sends representatives to recruit on this campus. We protest to demand an end to these gross injustices being committed in our name. There are many innocent people whose lives depend on s speaking out. We will not be silenced. Seeing through the media WassermanP PW~~ Vop i E6L~Yot~-I~ A LEXANDER COCKBURN, one of the most prominent radical journalists in the United States, will be speaking tonight at the Rackham Auditorium, at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Students of politics, media, or culture - or anyone interested in examining the alternatives to the narrowly circumscribed reporting and analysis of the corporate media's "junk-food journalism" will find this talk worthwhile. The subject of Cockburn's talk will be "The Alternative Press in the Reagan Years." Cockburn is himself. a leading contributor to the alternative press, with regular columns in the Nation, In These Times, and other left publications, in addition to the Wall Street Journal. This subject is particularly important in view of the growing concentration of ownership of the mass media and its increasing reliance on government sources of information. While independence and objectivity have never been, and never will be, more than myth for a media controlled by big business, the last few years have seen a remarkable erosion in the ability of the mainstream media to maintain even the necessary appearances. Thus, when the R e a a n administration decides to focus attention on Nicaragua, the war in El Salvador is suddenly forgotten.- Coverage of the war is absent, in spite of the fact that casualties are much higher in El Salvador than in Nicaragua, and that El Salvador is the fourth largest recipient of U.S. government funds in the world. The mainstream media dutifully countryside, is always "improving" its human rights record; while any arrest or censorship of opposition leaders in Nicaragua is a major object of concern. Cockburn's article in the spring of 1985 on the massive, almost daily aerial bombardment of the Salvadoran countryside, and the role of the U.S. media in ignoring this violence for more -than two years, finally forced the New York Times to report the bombing. But for the most part the corporate media feels that it can safely ignore its critics on the left, and the role of the alternative press has been has been to increase popular awareness of the social ills that don't seem to be part of "all the news that's fit to print." The alternative press - periodicals such as the Guardian (New York), The Nation, In These Times, and Monthly Review, to name just a few of the more widely circulated national publications -is readily available in Ann Arbor, in bookstores and at the University Library. In fact, the University's Labadie collection, in the Graduate Library, has one of the best collections of left publications in the country. Unlike citizens of countries in which the press is directly controlled, we cannot claim that the information necessary to see through the lies and crimes of our government is not available to us. It is there, although one has to make a conscious effort to find it. It is unfortunate that most people continue to get all of their news from notoriously one-sided sources. But FA&ST.AUSTRI~TY... oR Stow ?OLkND So THE GoVeRNMENtT CAN. SATIlSFY ITS CREDITRSZ... W 4 t$.Es WESTERN couNtfMIE!;. SOLIP-IY 'Willi US C. WAN LETTERS Daily biased against CIA recruitment To the Daily: I an writing this letter in response to your coverage of the CIA's visit to Ann Arbor on November 25, 1987. I find it disappointing that the Daily chose to present the readers with such a biased view. I though that newspapers and reporters were supposed to present the readers with an impartial view and let the readers draw their own conclusions. I think Michigan students and faculty are intelligent enought to do this. A perfect example are the headlines that were used on November 30, "Student gets kicked at CIA recruiting protest." This sugggests that the CIA recruiters were the only ones doing the pushing. This was not true. I think it is important to point out that before the University student was allegedly kicked, h e allegedly assaulted an undercover policeman. The difficult for people who unlike themselves wanted to meet with CIA employers and learn about the available jobs. The Daily can not go unblamed. On November 24, the Daily suggested that people demonstrate against the interviews. They announced the date and place where the interviews would take place, and suggested as well as encouraged people to protest. The cartoon which appeared at the bottom of the editorial page also implied gross generalizations. Personally, I do not think it was meant as a total joke, but, rather, made in jest. While everyone has the right to demonstrate, everyone also has the right to interview. The demonstrator refused to allow the interviews to be held as scheduled. As an interviewee, I was forced to use the back enterance of the Career Planning and scared for my safeyty as a result of it. Just because someone has' an interview with the CIA does not mean that they have agreed with all of their actions in the past. In fact, to many people's dismay, numerous positions-in the CIA have little to do with foreign intervention or contact. The Daily should stop trying to mold people's views and belief. I have nothing against people disagreeing with what the CIA does, but such views should not come from feature articles in the newspaper, and should be handled so that arrests and injuries are unnecessary. -Paula A. MighioO December 3 Violence at protest To the Daily: The Daily has been a usually interesting diversion, but I am amazed at the biased reporting of event that continually takes place. The most recent example was the article titled "Student gets kicked at CIA recruiting protest." (Daily 11/30/87) This headline does not fairly document what went on. If we what. might do the protesters have to push their way into the building, knock people down, and try to disrupt the actions of the CIA? I applaud tho protesters efforts at civil disobedience -- it is a right. But that right has limits. Physical violence goes beyond those bounds, slight as it may be. The CIA, whose role is