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OPINION f
Page 4
Monday, September 12, 1988
The Michigan Daily
Suppress criminals not student protesters
4
By Henry Park
According to some people, a mass
murderer has the rights of so-called free
speech. When such a criminal gets to the
podium, he or she deserves respect by a
,certain kind of reasoning.
No, this is not some type of liberal
coddling of criminals political view. The
same people want those who protest the
Mass murderer's speech arrested.
Those students fingering the mass
murderer at large are the ones to be
arested. That's right, law and order.
This point of view is popular among
University presidents. Former University
President Harold Shapiro condemned the
Rackham Student Government (RSG) for
a. symbolic campus-wide ban on George
Bush and the Reagan Cabinet in 1985.
Shapiro used this incident to argue for
discipline on campus.
Former president Fleming also cited
such incidents as one of his two main
reasons for restructuring the entire
University to abolish formal student input
in University governance through bylaw
7.02.
Others including Harvard President
Derek Bok have the same view:
punishment of those engaged in disruption
is necessary to preserve the free speech of
mass murderers.
a For his part, Regent Power has said
ihat he would give anyone the right to
?peak. To his credit, he would allow the
'Red Brigades and the PLO to speak on
campus; although, the question is
hypothetical because technically the U.S.
;overnment will not allow either group to
Henry Park is an Opinion Page staff
writer.
speak on campus.
In fairness, University authorities
generally do not talk about the issue of
resources and prestige to speakers. This is
especially true for captive audiences, such
as at graduation ceremonies.
Even if it were possible for students to suppress a national
media figure, it would be for his or her criminal actions, not
his or her views.
mass murder. They just say that the public
supports free speech for everyone and that
protests such as the ones against George
Bush, Edwin Meese and Jeanne
Kirkpatrick violated free speech.
However, to frame the issue this way is
opportunist, factually misleading and
evasive.
First is the factual issue. At the George
Bush speech to commemorate the
foundation of the Peace Corps, it was
possible to hear Bush's entire 100 watts of
power speech. Only those who chose to
stand by the protesters had difficulties
hearing.
Then there is the difficulty of actually
shutting down a speech. According to
some people, Jeanne Kirkpatrick chose to
cancel a speech in the face of protest, but
no one forced her to. Yet, in both the
Bush and Kirkpatrick cases, many people,
who did not attend the events, received the
impression that students forcefully stopped
speeches. In the same manner, President
Shapiro and others made it sound like the
RSG had successfully banned Bush, as if
the RSG had its own police force.
Second is the access issue. Many have
pointed out that people such as Bush and
Kirkpatrick are already media stars. They
do not need a University outlet and
resources to be heard. Many have said
there should be a democratic process by
which the University lends its podium,
If anything, it is the views of powerful
people like Bush which drown out smaller
voices on the national level. One of the
few times that protesters receive coverage
occurs when a speaker is nearly or
completely shouted down or egged. It is a
reasonable news judgement made by
journalists and editors that such protests
are of widespread public interest compared
with peaceful and hum-drum
demonstrations.
Finally, and most importantly, the
arguments of Fleming, Shapiro et. al. rest
on a logical fallacy. Even if it were
possible for students to suppress a
national media figure, it would be for his
or her criminal actions, not his or her
views. That is to say, there would be no
repression of speech qua speech.
Fleming et. al. would like to claim that
they are protecting unpopular views with
their disciplinary rules. It is common
knowledge, however, that those who
disrupted Bush, Meese and Kirkpatrick do
not disrupt speeches by ordinary people
with the same views as Bush, Meese and
Kirkpatrick. Indeed, views even more
unpopular and unrefined are heard on
campus all the time. Anyone familiar
with the Dartmouth Review or the old
Michigan Review would realize that
Bush's views are relatively image-
conscious.
Reagan and Bush gained about 40
percent of the vote locally, but Ann Arbor
does not engage itself in disruption every
time that 40 percent airs its views! The
reason for this is that there is a big
difference between someone with
Republican views and someone with the
power to implement war crimes against
millions of people.
Those who implement mass murder
deserve disruption by protesters. When the
police have a warrant to arrest a yet to be
apprehended murderer, few people would
question their right to actually arrest the
suspect at a podium in mid-speech!
The reader who agrees with this last
point will recognize that the real issue is
whether or not Bush, Meese et. al. have
taken part in the crimes they are accused
of. Yet, in this question, the University
offers no help: it abdicates its civic duty.
University presidents like Fleming are
either extreme hypocrites or conscious
defenders of the status quo to act as if
students were the main threat to free
speech in this country. Fleming is willing
to undemocratically restructure the
University. He is willing to set-up .a
kangaroo court to determine whether or
not students have violated someone's free
speech. In his earlier term as president he
saw to it that Black Action Movement
participants received suspensions.,
On the other hand, the University has
done nothing to bring George Bush or
other embodiments of the status quo to
trial. Quite the contrary, the University
has had complicity in investing in
apartheid and has engaged in military
research aimed at Third World peoples. In
both cases, the deprivation of free speech
and other rights involved is near total.
It does not matter how many people
testify to the Ann Arbor police that Bush
is a mass murderer and accomplice in
international drug dealing and arms
smuggling: The police would not arrest'
Bush for a trial. It is this systematic
breakdown in so-called law and ordet,
which allowed Nixon to receive a pardon,
that forces those seeking justice to do
something other than calling the Ann
Arbor police, the FBI or any other branch
of the government.
For now, it is necessary to engage in
people's trials and other publicity devices
to pressure the government and persuade',
people that Bush & Co. should be
arrested, not the protesters.
One good thing about the First
Amendment, as read literally and not
interpreted by the likes of Fleming, is that:
it protects citizens' rights of free speech
against the government, not the other way
around. It is difficult enough to bring:
members of the government to justice
without arresting people who try to do so.
It's about time University presidents
ceased their systematic defense of
government officials and recognized thf
difference between action and words and
between power and persuasion. It is no
accident that the people who ban the PLO,
the Red Brigades and many others from
speaking within most of the United States
are the same people who have supportedl
apartheid, contra-terrorists in so-called;
socialist countries and death squads in.
right-wing dictatorships.
Dead people have no rights. For
millions across the globe, especially in
the Third World, any wrench thrown in the,
Bush-Meese-Kirkpatrick mass murder
machine advances the cause of life and
hence all rights.
4
4
4
' I
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Letters-
-7
Vol. IC No. 3
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.
ONE OF THE MOST important factors
iti determining admission to college is
still the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).
As new students ask each other their
SAT scores, it is appropriate that one
ask what the SAT measures.
The Educational Testing Service
(ETS), which is the corporation that
administers the SATs, claims that SATs
measure some sort of verbal and
arithmetic achievement. Achievement is
thought to be somewhat distinct from
intelligence, which concerns ability. In
4 previous editorial ("How students get
iere," 9/9/88), the Daily questioned the
Value of the concept of intelligence and
pointed to the scientific research
destroying the evidence for the
iypothesis of heritability of intelli-
SATs
average
750-800
700-749
650-699
600-649
550-599
500-549
450-499
400-449
350-399
300-349
250-299
200-249
Parents'
mean income
=-class
those who take the test according to
Nairn. The same is approximately true
for LSATs, GREs and GMATs.
What is worse, SATs and first year
grades have little value in predicting
future career success according to ETS.
In fact, the more years students are at
college, the more students with high
SAT scores and low SAT scores
become less distinguishable by their
grades. Moreover, a pair of dice will
predict as well as the LSAT whether a
student will graduate from law school
for 97 percent of students. The SAT
also does the same as a pair of dice to
predict whether or not a student will
stay in college beyond the first year in
95 percent of cases.
What little value SATs have in
predicting college grades is diminished
by bias in the test against women.
According to ETS in its 1987 Annual
Report, SATs underpredict women's
first year college grades. That means
that colleges that use SAT scores on
average will not admit some women
students who would have done better
than the men admitted..
On tne issue of bias as a whole, ETS
has also admitted that socioeconomic
background is a reasonable explanation
for why SAT scores differ among racial
groupings. ETS believes that low-
scorers may "live in environments of
poverty that are not conducive to
learning."
When asked what the SAT measures,
one would do best to answer parents'
income. As such, the SAT test does
nothing but beg the question of who to
admit to college. Affluent parents
spend more on their children's
educational environment at home, settle
in neighborhoods that spend more on
education and put their children through
more years of formal education than
poorer parents. This does not mean
Reject
societys
chains
To the Daily:
Brothers and sisters.
When you see a young
brother driving a new Benz
with gold grill and trim, don't
shake your head in envy,
wishing you could pay cash
money it cost. Do you ever
think, "That could be me,
everybody's rolling?" Forget
about the cash, rather, think
about the productive Black
lives that were paid. Somebody
hit the pipe. Who, do your
suppose? How many White
lives were stagnated? Must we
also lower ourselves to selling
each other off? Survival is
survival, but surviving off the
flesh of your brother-man is
cannabalism.
You want the respect you
believe due to you for being a
ground-breaking, precedent-
setting Black attending a Big-
10 school? Respect must be
earned. For each of us here,
there are thousands of brothers
and sisters who could have
succeeded, given the chance.
Neither you nor I are
exceptional or even very
special in that respect. We are
only exceptionally lucky.
Each one of US, as the "special
people," the ones "who've
made it," should be the first to
indict ourselves. The capacity
for excellence is through the
perpetual ability to improve
oneself. I admit my faulted
state, I am my first critic and
the first to change the errors. I
implore all who are strong
enough to see the greater good
to join me in my self-
criticism. As you may boast of
knowing so-and-so brother on
Wall Street, or having so-and-
so connection here or there,
how many people do you know
with nothing? How many do
as the most potentially suc-
cessful strata of Blacks yet
must be both the vanguard of
change and a buffer against
retrenchment. Are we, as
Blacks, content to let our race
degenerate to the fragmented,
self-serving, young upwardly-
mobile race by which we are
surrounded?
Brothers and sisters, is this
to be the strange fruit of the
blood, tears and sweat of all
those who came before us? If
the answer is yes, then let us
dust off the rhetorical cotton
gins, for slowly but surely we
will be enslaved, in looser,
more attractive chains.
-Celia C. Peters
September 8
Quayle is
'Yuppie
scum'
To the Daily:
Who is Dan Quayle? The
uproar over his use of family
influence to avoid military
service in Vietnam is
obscuring other defects in his
background.
Quayle's close friends and
family acknowledge his glaring
lack of intellectual ability.
Theodore Bendall, Quayle
family attorney recently said
that if there was one thing he
could change about the Indiana
senator it would be to "increase
his I.Q. He is not an intellect."
Quayle's father freely admits
that his son's main interest in
school was "broads and booze."
Dan Quayle's mediocre
academic standing in high
school apparently prevented
him from applying to major
universities. Instead he went to
De Pauw University where his
grandfather was a member of
the board of trustees and a
major contributor.
In college Quayle had a
reputation for being a poor
student, frequently drinking to
excess, and dating many
women. A former professor
$24,124
$21,980
$21,292
$20,330
$19,481
$18,824
$18,122
$17,387
$16,182
$14,355
$11,428
$ 8,639
night." Another classmate,
Joseph Wirt, said Quayle
majored in "girls, golf and
alcohol," at De Pauw.
Quayle's college record was
so spotty that a furor erupted in
1982 when the college
announced it would award an
honorary doctor of laws degree
to Quayle. The faculty secretly
voted 32-24 against awarding
the degree.
Despite Quayle's assertion
that he wanted to join the
National Guard so that he could
go to law school as soon as
possible, he did not go to law
school right away, because he
did not meet the academic
requirements of Indiaq#a
University's law school.
Voters have an opportunity
to beat Bush and bag Quayle ij
November. Dan Quayle is
another example of the
intellectually bankrupt yuppie.
scum the country club,
Republicans are trying to foist,
on the American public as 1
poor excuse for leadership. The
voters can see through theip
goody-two-shoes facade and
trite cliches.
-Jim Senyszyi
September 51
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Daily Opinion Page letter policy
Due to the volume of mail, the Daily cannot print
all the letters and columns it receives, although an
effort is made to print the majority of material on a
ence.
i It turns out that the SAT's
dmeasurement of achievement is as
duibious as the IQ (intelligence quotient)
tst's measure of intelligence.
ccording to a report published by
Ralph Nader and written by Allan Naim
tid associates - The Reign of ETS -
SAT scores correlate more with
uarents' income than with first year
cMllege grades. The correlation