PERSPECTIVES
The Michigan Daily Thursday, December 8, 1988 Page 5
r,.

SDudergrinch and


the

Talking

BY ROLLIE HUDSON
On the old. plantations which
helped build this "kinder, gentler"
nation, the law was not always fol-
lowed to the strictest letter. And I'll
let you in on a secret. It isn't here at
the old "U" either - the way the
new Prez was chosen violated the
State of Michigan's Open Meetings
Act. But don't tell anyone I told you
so. You see, I might already be
going to jail for saying too much
about it (despite the first amend-
ment).
Back to the plantations. Every
once and a while, a "helper" might
happen to have been beaten to death.
Technically this was illegal. As a
result, the owners would sneak the
bodies out into the woods and leave
them there, without a burial. They
did it all in secret.
Concordant, an old Afro-American
folk tale relates the story of the
Talking Bones:
John was walking through the
woods one day and wandered across a
human skeleton. Curious, he won-
dered aloud as to how it ended up
there. "Tongue is the cause of us
being here," it said. Understandably
frightened, he ran back and told The
Man he "helped" that there was a
talking skeleton at the edge of the
woods. Skeptical, The Man, and
many others, went to see. "Make the
bones talk," they said. But the bones
were silent. So they beat John to
death and left him there. And then the
bones talked. They said, "Tongue
brought us here, and tongue brought
you here too."
As to the hard working, yet
"ethical" researchers on campus we
should sincerely tip our Christmas
hats to their ingenuity. After all,
they bring us gadgets! "Give us con-
venience or give us death." But for
those military researchers who would

give us convenient death by building
weapons which kill and maim and
burn and melt (flesh from peoples'
eye sockets) - all in the name of
academic freedom -we have then,
as an imperative, a bone to pick with
the establishment. As Duderstadt and
Vest, these current champions of the
ever encroaching "corporate marshal
law," or "high-tech feudalism," move
through their first one thousand days
in office, we must watch them
closely.
But they don't want any trouble
they tell us, they just want to meet
and shake hands with everybody.
"Don't worry, be happy." Swallow
this, we'll call it the "Michigan
Mandate" despite the fact that it
mandates nothing; the administration
continues the trend of hiring mostly
non-professional people of color; the
administration has jimmied minority
reports which fabricate data and bias
statistics to the University's expedi-
ence; it continues to support a hos-
tile social atmosphere by not includ-
ing the white Greek system under its
anti-discrimination policy; and it
continues its failure to create a repre-
sentative minority enrollment on
campus.
The other day I was walking past
the President's Palace (prepared for
him at $500,000.00 expense in order
that Ann Arbor's 1,500 homeless
might marvel at it and coincidental
with the latest twelve and a half per-
cent tuition hike - ask the (pa-
)"rents" about that one if you're not
working your way through school)
and I saw that the emperor had no
clothes! There he stood, off in the
distance, bear-legged and wearing
only his maize shorts and blue tee-
shirt, unloading boxes from one of
his cars. I speculated on their con-
tent. Maybe they contained presents
for the little kiddies. But maybe they

were really cannisters of mustard gas
disguised as academic research mate-
rial. (That goes on here, you know.)
I got to thinking. Now if Jimmy's
unloading presents for the kids that's

probably okay. But if he's continu-
ing to "upgrade" this place to an
institution which will do 30 percent,
40 percent, and might even someday
(like Carnegie-Mellon) do up to 50
percent military research, he will sure
as the dickens be visited by those
three ghosts of Christmas...
The ghost from the past, possibly
in the form of a Black student with
an afro, will remind him of the early
1970s BAM strikes in which Black
and white students and faculty
actually shut down the University

because of its low minority
enrollment. That ghost of X-mas
past might point to the "no
kill/maim" clause (regental bylaw
7.02) which was passed then because
t
this country was - and still should
be - sick of supporting, either di-
rectly or indirectly, the jelly-red,
splattered brains of crying men,
women, and infants (usually of color)
crushed to death in their straw huts
by U.S. Army bulldozers.
The ghost of Christmas present
could come in the form of a woman
injured while trying to stand up for
her rights during Duderstadt's
inauguration (aka Sandra Stein-
graber); a doctoral student in biology
who cares enough about this society

to get out and attempt to give a voice
against those who are determined to
milk it dry for their own gain. The
ghosts of Mike Fischer and Cale
Southworth and myself will follow.
Cale is one of the school newspa-
per's editors who was suspiciously
singled out of the crowd to be beaten
and arrested by FBI-trained campus
security and the police. I am a former
orientation leader, once useful but no
longer needed (After all, one can't use
regular currency on the subway.).
And what might the ghost of
Christmas future look like? Maybe
his name will be General Ripper;
President of the University of
Michigan - Institution of Marginal

Bones
Learning and Secret Research -
Pentagon'Branch. He'll come amidst
a party of Borks, Rehnquists, and
Scalias mingling over castor-oil
cocktails at a law school party
(coming this February) for people
who would roll-back the constitution
if given the chance. They'll cast
amoral eyes to the "niggers-keep out,
except a few" signs hanging from the
de facto walls of the institution.
I can only speculate as to what the
price of all this greed will be. And; if
I end up in jail there will be more
time to think of the talking Bones'
words, "Tongue brought us here..."
maybe tongue can get us out?


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