. . . March 1993 Letters NEW WORLD, OLD ROCKS? An amateur scientist of my acquaintance once challenged his grandfather, a devout scholarly Jew, with his belief in the biblical depiction of creation. He resorted to the latest scientific theory of the age of the Earth, referring to carbondating. The old man thought for a while and then responded, "Do you think that when God made the world, He used new rocks?" It always amazes me when a mere human pretends to know anything about the Creation. It seems to me that the world was always, not some deity. Isn't it childish to think that if something exists, someone would have had to make it? What evidence is there that there ever was a "void"? How much are we expected to believe on faith when we are endowed with God-given Reason and Free Will? Victor Bloom'57 MD STATEMENT ON STUDENT RIGHTS Fred W. Robinson'43 THE STATEMENT of Amy Ellis '94 was partially deleted from the article on the U-M Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities. I would appreciate knowing the remainder of her statement, especially since it seemed to express an opposing view. John W. Allen Ed. Note-The paragraph quoting Ellis read in full: "Ellis, who is vice chair of the Student Rights Commission, said she would support a code that targeted 'only federally mandated aspects of sexual harassment.'" A following statement by Regent Philip H. Power was also a victim of typesetting gremlins. That section read: "After pointing out that the Statement is a code of student behavior, not a criminal code,' Regent Philip H. Power several times expressed frustration with the legal terminology being used to address concerns. The use of legal terms 'fundamentally damages the concept,' he said. 'It is a set of expectations for behavior and facilitates the educational process. It is not criminal law. It doesn't determine guilt, it determines whether [someone] behaved improperly."' THE UNIVERSITY of Michigan has been educating hundreds of thousands of students for over 150 years without a student conduct policy. I am now wondering how it was possible for the University to survive all those years without one. I found it rather amusing that the same issue of Michigan Today contained an article entitled 'The Impact of the Inquisition on the New World". Lynn M. Hoghaug ON PAGE 4 of the last issue, I find, "Today more that half the student body are women, Hatcher noted" On page 5, under, "Ann Arbor campus enrollment totals 36,026 this fall and below: male students 20,176; female students 16,450. Does that mean that on the other campuses, the female enrollment so outnumbers the male enrollment so as to make Hatcher's statement correct? Norman D. Schwartz According to the Fall 1992 "Term Enrollment and Credit Hour Reports" issue by the Office of the Registrar, the fall '92 staistics were: total Ann Arbor campus 20,133 men, 16,410women. TotalforAnnArbor,Flint and Deraborn campuses: 26,824 men, women 24, 565. The figures for Literature, Science & the Arts were: 8,360 men; women 8,658. It was the latter statistic to which President Hatcher was referring-Ed. THE MESSAGE that comes through in your reporting the student enrollment is that there is a Balkanization of our University. No feeling of Main Stream America. Is our University becoming as polarized as you report? Thomas G. Kuzma We should have added, "They are all blueblooded Wolverines"-Ed. RAMBLIN' RAMBEAU I traveled by bus to speak better Spanish and to meet the people. The people were very kind and the scenery breathtaking. The only hitch was my entry into and exit from Ecuador. The custom officials made it extremely difficult, insisting that I did not have proper "clearance." The proper clearance turned out to be a few American dollars. The experience was once in lifetime for which I thank the University for the friends I made. Casper 0. Grathwohl '56 CATHARINE Rambeau's article was very absorbing. Its fascinating to read about high adventure along with the various technical accomplishments of U of M graduates. While a student in Ann Arbor in the late '60s, I became interested in motorcycles myself. Since then, motorcycling and the people I have met through the sport have become an eminent part of my lifestyle. I am especially enamored bv Catharine's adventure because it personifies the "can do" attitude, while standing as an exquisite example of the complete antithesis of the stereotypical image of motorcyclists as presented to us by the infamous 'B' movies. I can hardly wait to read the complete book! Karl J. Liskow'71 BOLCOM AND 'MCTEAGUE' Margaret Lamb'66 BRODSKY AND FEMINISM I am sorry to hear Mr. Brodsky espousing such views-tantamount to saying that the suffering of losing a husband rates second to the suffering of losing a child (or some other such attempt to quantify an injustice). Again, I admire and respect this poet, knowing the commitment his work makes to the individual, commitments which do not jibe with his comments in the interview. Rebecca Newth I WAS shocked to read the comments by Joseph Brodsky on women. Dismissing the entire feminist movement as "garbage" because there are "far more pressing issues like radal equality and the lousy condition of the economy," Brodsky attempts to put some kind of hierarchy on atrocities as if we should save our energies for some and not be incensed at all. His sneering at feminism is quite out of place for the kind of sensitivity we expect from a major poet. Moreover, I cannot imagine his female students at Mount Holyoke being pleased with his characterization of them as "chickens" when he remarks of teaching at the all-women's college that he feels "like the fox in the chicken bam." Any teacher who views his students with such a sexist and predatory mind-set should not be in the profession. Emily Dickinson attended Mount Holyoke. I wonder what she would think of Brodsky's senseless remarks on women if she were enrolled in his class this semester. George Klawitter '69 CLEARLY, MR. BRODSKY, did not win his Nobel prize for humanitarianism. Nor is he fit to teach young women or anyone, for that matter. Here, for Mr. Brodsky's edification, are some feminist issues which merit his concern: Rape and violence against women are on the increase in the U.S. Rape on a grand scale is decried in Bosnia. In India and China, murder of unwanted female babies is common. African girls are routinely circumcised. Pakistani women and their children face long, indeterminate jail sentences without benefit of trial on false charges of adultery simply because their husbands want to be rid of them. Wife murder goes unpunished in Brazil. Moslem women are shot for any behavior deemed immodest by the mullahs. And soon. Possibly, just possibly, the inhumanity underlying these crimes is the same inhumanity underlying those "far more pressing issues" for which Mr. Brodsky implies concern. Possibly, just possibly, the inhumanity underlying these crimes is related to the indifference of the Mr. Brodskys of the world who care only about their own egocentric problems. C. A. Cummiskey'60 MBA WE ENJOYED "Conversation with Joseph Brodsky," but were curious about your statement that only Brodsky and Robert Frost had been poets in residence at the university. W.H. AudejYs stay at Michigan in 1941-42 is detailed in Auden: An American Friendship by alumnus Charles H. Miller (Scribner's 1983). Possibly Auden did not have the title "Poet in Residence," but he certainly had an office in Angell Hall, with an announcement on the door: 'I inhabit this hole from two to four on Thursdays." His class met in Angell 2215. By coincidence Auden's first Ann Arbor home, at 1223 Pontiac Trail, was built on the foundation of the house in which Frost had lived during his residency at Michigan. (The original house had been tom down, and a new one built, in the interval.) During second semester Auden moved to 1504 Brooklyn. English professor Albert Stevens and his wife, Angelyn, were close friends of Auden's, and it was for their son, Wystan A., (born just 50 years ago) that the proud godfather wrote his "Mundans et Infans" poem. Miller's book is full of detail about Ann Arbor life in the 1940s-of John Malcolm Brinnin's bookstore across from Angell, The Book Room; of Auden's dazzling reading list for his English 135 course; of his work habits; of the 1930 Huppmobile providing student transportation; of the loneliness of an openly homosexual poet with an Oxford accent teaching at a Midwestern university. Perhaps it's time for a university or city fine arts commission to place plaques on the one-time homes, offices, or classrooms of Michigan's literary and artistic figures: Auden, Arthur Miller, Frost, Brodsky, or humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg. Were I a student again, it would be exciting to know that I was in the classroom where Auden or Brodsky had taught, or lived in the dormitory where Wallenberg had dwelt half a century earlier. I did not attend Michigan myself, but my husband took his M.A. there in 1946-47, attending classes in Angell; our daughter, also studying and teaching in Angell, finished her doctorate in 1990. The community of scholars is not merely worldwide, but reaches backward in time to those now dead, and forward to the unborn. Plaques would help studenta-and administrators, perhaps-to feel this. Ruth H. Bauerle Delaware, I REMEMBER reading Dr. Douglas J. Miller '67's letter in the October issue and shrugging my shoulders at the blatant bias expressed in it. I was happy to read John Boshar '42's response to in the last issue until I got to the end of his letter, where he states that we should hope for a "peace with justice" [in the Middle East] because "any 'peace' other than one with justice is a mockery and will not endure." It is here that I could not help but react, for peace with justice is just another empty phrase which, when analyzed, reveals itself as yet another ideal which, by definition, cannot be realized. Justice, as it is commonly (misunderstood, is a relative term, and only those who have an unshakable faith in their relative gods believe in its divine i.e. ultimate, manifestation, whence they in turn justify killing off others in the name of it. Nature certainly knows no justice, and humans, being creatures of nature, are incapable of delivering it to each other, Can any one tell me when in history, ancient or recent, there has ever been a peace with justice? And no peace has ever "endured" either, since we still have nations and ethnic groups at war with each other to this day. Old wrongs cannot ever be righted by inflicting new ones, especially if the new ones are inflicted on those who never participated in any of the old injustices, as is the case in the Israel-Palestine conflict referred to in the two letters. The only hope we do have today is that people will find it in their hearts to forget old grievances and rise to the occasion by working out a compromise in which all will finally learn to tolerate one another's right to exist, not as nations, but as individuals. Hela Michot-Dietrich '65R IN A RECENT issue there was a letter mentioning Emil Weddige. He was one of my most favorite teachers at the College of Art and Design in the'40s. Yes, the '40s! I graduated in '46. 1 was so thrilled to find he is still very much around. Suzanne M. Whitman (Buell) |