a C o 0 jtllf> at 9 The Michigan Daily Centennial Edition -Friday, October 19,1990- Page 3 M _ _ _ _ _ __. __,-_ _ W _ . ... ..Y...... .....r .... ., w~v,.u v ,v v, .. .v,.,. v::,.,.,.,.,.,.,.w.v v..,v .....a, ,. ._-- ----- 100 years of Daily, 'U, antagonism Paper and administrators have always had differences It's better than the UGH A view of the news room, where Daily news staffers produce the next day's paper from 4 p.m. to midnight. Daily relegated 'coeds' toi ,R by Josephine Ballenger You've come a long way, baby.K Sad as it may be, this Virginia Slims slogan is a fitting description of women's changing roles at The Michigan Daily. To speak of the early history of ywomen at the Daily is to confine _discussion to one page of the news- paper-appropriately named the Women's Page. The Women's Page, which was ' begun in the early 1900s and termi- nated in 1957, made social, aca- demic, and non-academic announce- oments. The Office of the Dean of -Women got regular publicity, as did dances, balls, clubs, sorority and fra- ternity functions, women's (intra- hural) sports, and women's scholar- rship awards. The League, a student- .run organization which sponsored events for women, received coverage almost daily. * Mary Alice (Cheney) Campbell, d Women's Page staffer in the late forties, described the page as "sort of silly. We didn't cover many impor- tant things. The same stories were rehashed day after day. It was quite bland." The "women's editor" was re- sponsible for the Women's Page, 'which also meant, practically speak- ing, that she looked after all female * Daily staffers. Women, for the most part, worked solely on this page and did not venture into other areas of the paper. The first time a woman held a top position other than women's edi- tor occurred after almost 30 years of the paper's existence. In 1918 Mil- dred (Mighell) Blake became the first "female managing editor. Besides Blake and the women's editors, there were few women who got their names in the editorial boxes. Helen (Domine) Barnes, a women's editor in the early 1930s, doesn't have fond memories of L women's treatment at the Daily. "It seems we were awfully meek; I'm ashamed," Barnes said. "But the institutions were set up so that you were so lucky to be there, you just didn't question," she explained. Other than the Women's Page staff, Barnes said, "There were abso- lutely no women" working else- where on the paper. "There was the feeling that we were pushed into a corner. We saw the male staff but didn't know them," she added. Barnes said the female staff never had any editorial input or policy- making power. They also were not allowed to work on the layout or production aspects of the paper. In addition, there were social mores which no "coed" - a label for a woman who attended a coeduca- tional institution - dared disobey. "We never went around campus without hats, gloves, and high heels," Barnes said. Thus "running around reporting," particularly in heels, could be difficult. Looking back, Barnes said she wished she and her staffers had made change-- or at least tried. "Now I think it was funny, sort of foolish that we didn't do anything, but they wouldn't have listened to us. It was simply the way it was (and) we were not a revolutionary group." .. Women's status somewhat im- proved at the Daily in the 1940s, partly as a result of the large number of University men drafted into the service for WWII. While the Women's Page re- mained in full swing, women began writing front page news and sports stories and contributing to editorials. The women's editor was included at editors' meetings, and some women advanced to senior editorial posi- tions, including managing editor and editorial director. The business side was heavily staffed by women, who also rose to business manager and advertising manager. "Remember," said Lois (Kelso) Hunt, an associate women's editor in the late 1940s, "the boys were at war." Women's Editor Joan (Wilk) Cherner, agreed, saying women in the '40s weren't discriminated against. "If you were good, you didn't feel like you couldn't make it... We never felt like we were sec- ond class citizens." But while women were gaining more freedom at the paper, their non- Daily lives remained restricted by curfews and other University rules. "Coeds" were required to be at home by 10 p.m. on weekdays and 12:30 on weekends. Exceptions were made for "big dances and balls" when women could return home as late as 1:30. Male students did not have a cur- few. "Good little sorority girls had to be locked up," Hunt said. If a woman was late in making curfew, the "women's dean would get after you the next day," Hunt said. For each minute late, a student had to return home 15 minutes ear- lier the next weekend night. If she were more than 15 minutes late, she had to face the Women's Judiciary Council, which would decide her working at the paper," one staffer merrily said. U.. Dorothy (Myers) Sampas became the first female city editor in 1955. In contrast to the conservative atti- tude towards women during that era, Sampas remembers the Daily as a rather progressive institution. 'It seems we were awfully meek. I'm ashamed. But the institutions were set up so that you were so lucky to be there, you just didn't question.' - Helen Barnes former Women's Editor "It was one of the fairest places for women at that time. Women were accepted for their abilities... and were encouraged when other organi- zations didn't (encourage them)," she said. "Women on the Daily staff at that time wanted to be accepted for what they did... you could call them early feminists," Sampas added, cit- ing talented females who later be- came successful. Some editorial and one page feature writers were "superbly quali- fied," she said. "It would have been surprising if the men had discrimi- nated against them. They were not prejudiced - you have to give them credit." Still, women were more concen- trated on the business staff than on the editorial side, she noted. The Women's Page remained, but there were women on News who did all types of stories. "They weren't pushed into 'syrupy sweet' stories," Sampas said. 1957 was the last year for the Women's Page. Although this move may be seen as an advancement for women - they were no longer relegated to writing "frilly" stories on fashion and fun - equality was still far down the road. Describing gender dichotomies then compared to today, Susan (Holtzer) Jones, an associate editorial director in the early 1960s, said, "It wasn't remotely similar." "The differences were institu- tional, not at the Daily," she said. "It was a highly sexist world. The Daily, if anything, was better than the outside world." Jones said it was unusual then for See COEDS, Page 9 by Josh Mitnick It is a given law of any campus and can be relied upon like a scien- tific equation: Considerable friction will exist between the university administration and the university's student press. And over the past 100 years, the Daily and the University have cer- tainly had their share of conflict. From forcing a University regent to resign, to calling on administra- tors to publish the salaries of its employees, to defending its editorial freedom against impinging Univer- sity officials, Daily editors and re- porters have always been critical of the administration. The central battleground for the recurring conflicts has been the Board for Student Publications. Since the University assumed finan- cial control over the Daily in 1903, this body - originally named Board in Control of Student Publications - was charged with overseeing the Daily's finances. Originally com- posed of University faculty and stu- dents, the Board was not supposed to involve itself in editing Daily content. Even as staffers celebrate its cen- tennial this year, the Daily is strug- gling with the Board over an issue which editors claim threatens edito- rial freedom of the newspaper. In a front page black-on-white editorial, they requested the Board dismiss Student Publications General Man- ager Nancy McGlothlin, accusing her of dictating policies impinging on their ability to make editorial decisions. The issue of editorial freedom is not a new one. In the summer of 1929, the Board used its authority to censor a controversial Arts column which frequently criticized Univer- sity Drama department productions. In the wake of one of the few inci- dents of blatant University censor- ship, Arts columnist R. Leslie Askren resigned from the staff. Lawrence Klein, the managing editor of that year's summer Daily, said that the Board's action was taken because a faculty member had complained to the Board that Askren's columns werehurting box office sales. After this first incident of cen- sorship, members of the Board re- ceived considerable criticism from the University community. "There was a bad reaction to the Board's ac- tion and Askren's resignation by students and faculty members," Klein said. Klein said Board censor- ship ceased after the incident. But seven years later, the Board again censored Daily editorial con- tent. When Board chair Prof. William McLaughlin deleted a state legislator's statement from a news article, Associate Editor Fred Warner Neal resigned in protest. "I regret to leave The Daily... As an employee of the Board in Con- trol, after the order not to run the story from Lansing, I had no alterna- tive but to obey. I do not choose, however, to remain subject to such orders in the future," read Neal's let- ter of resignation. Although then-University. Presi- dent Alexander Ruthven supported McLauglin's action, the deleted quote eventually ran in a letter to the editor protesting the Board's deci- sion. Even though the portion of the legislator's quote had been censored in the news story, the quote evaded censorship on the opinion page. A more heated conflict than the and in a few instances, the Board did not approve the entire slate. Klein said in 1929, the Board re- jected George Tilley and himself for the top two senior editorial posi- tions."(Tilley) was probably the most brilliant editor who worked at the Daily," Klein said. "(The Board) took a dim view of us because of our handling of the 1928 presidential election." The Daily had run a dis- proportionately large photo of the 1928 Democratic presidential loser Al Smith next to a smaller photo of the Republican winner Herbert Hoover. In 1937, despite protests by the student government that the Board violated its own set of procedures for appointment of editors, the Board re- jected the senior editors' appoint- ment to managing editor. Judith Bleier, Caroline Dow, Fred Kramer, Cynthia Neu, Michael Olin- ick, Judith Oppenheim and Harry Perlstadt, seven of the eight junior nominees for the1962-63 senior po- sitions, all refused to accept thei new posts after the Board rejected three of seven students nominated. "The Board violated fundamental principles of the freedom of the press and instituted, in one of the subtles and vilest forms, pre-censorship i1 the Daily's editorial page," read Or editorial by the juniors protesting the Board. After a month of criti- cism, the Board finally accepted the students' recommendations. Five years later, the Board re- jected the appointment of Rogei Rapoport to the position of Edito- in-Chief because of controversial articles he had written as a reporter. University President Harlan Hatche supported Board Chair Prof. Luke Cooperrider's decision and admini- trators called Rapoport an "irrespon- sible and unacceptable candidate. 'The faculty and stu- dents don't think the Daily is a good news- paper and the taxpay ers don't want to sup- port the filth which gets printed' - A University regent in 1970 Rapoport said the relationship with the administration was always tense. The Daily regularly broke ar- ticles on controversial issues such as military research at the University and the administration's relations with local draft boards. "The Board felt that the paper was doing a lot of controversial coverage - and I was associated with it," Rapoport said Rapoport described the staff as angered by the Board's decision. "The staff was of a mind to remain independent," he said. Rapoport said if the editors had accepted the Boards rejection, the staff wouldhave de- generated into another "University organ." Three days later, however, aftr the protest of 35 state legislatorS, the Board finally agreed to accept Rapoport as editor. As a compo- mise, the editors agreed to hire a p'e- fessional journalist to critique the paper and to improve communie*- tions with the Board. After Rapoport, the Board stopped approving the Daily's choices for editors. This year, the clause in the Regental by-laws which delegates this oversight aq- thority may be deleted by te Freshmen? Not in the post-'87 paper by Andrew Gottesman On Monday, April 13, 1987, "freshmen" ceased to exist in the mind of Michigan Daily staffers. That was the day the Daily insti- tuted its inclusive language policy, which attempts to "change _ ideas about stereotypical gender roles," ac- cording to an explanation printed on the front page. This was accom- plished "for example, (by) changing freshman to first-year student, chairman to chair, and congressman to member of congress." However, the policy was not adopted without a major struggle be- tween staffers over a period of sev- eral months. In general, the sports staff was strongly against the change while the opinion staff and news edi- tors favored it. "When you change the way we describe almost a quarter of the peo- ple at Michigan (first-year students), we expected a tremendous amount of opposition," said Rebecca Blumen- stein, a news staffer at the time. "Of the connotation of redshirt freshman or true freshman. When I look back on that, it's just so foolish. I don't see The Michigan Daily as a dictio- nary. Eventually, the sports staff was allowed to keep terms such as "lineman" and "defenseman," but "freshman" became "first-year stu- dent" throughout the paper. A second style change was adopted soon afterward, but did not attract nearly as much argument or attention. The Daily decided to begin referring to Blacks with a capital "B" rather than a small "b." Different people use different reasoning to explain why this change was made. However, all agree that Blacks needed to be identified as having a distinct ethnicity. "There was a real big controversy over this," Blumenstein said. "At the time. tha ncimnle w..a ..nrpa ,rnn