FeedbackGetting it right without unmentioned aspects

I hope that any of your readers amongthe faculty members of the PhysicsDepartment have learned to accept thetext of an article in Spectator as a zerothapproximation of the content of an in-terview. If not, I must expect some sharpquestions from that faculty, who areportrayed in a recent article on proposalsfor reorganization of the EngineeringSchool as being scheduled for wholesaleinclusion in our faculty. We proposesomething much more modest, and I hopemore realistic. If the Trustees accept ourproposal, we will invite a few members ofthe Physics Department to accept non-budgeted membership in a department ofApplied Physics and Nuclear Engineering,while maintaining their present budgetedmembership in the Physics Department.We do hope that by including these fewindividuals in our departmental faculty wewill strengthen our coordination with thePhysics Department and increase thelikelihood of complementary developmentof our two faculties.

Unmentioned in the article is the plan to

extend to several faculty members in theGraduate School of Business similar in-vitations to accept unbudgeted mem-bership in the proposed IndustrialEngineering and Operations ResearchDepartment. The objectives for thisproposal are similar to those noted above.

The article is also incorrect in itsstatement that "There are currently noEngineering School courses offered inApplied Physics at the EngineeringSchool." This misunderstanding probablyarose as an incorrect inference from thefact that there are no courses in theEngineering School with the formaldesignator "Applied Physics." In fact wehave in the School of Engineering andApplied Science a wide range of courses

across the spectrum implied by our officialname, including courses on appliedphysics. In developing courses of this kindwe are anxious to avoid unnecessaryoverlap with courses presented in thePhysics Department, and we want ourstudents in Applied Physics to take fulladvantage of the strengths and interests ofthe Physics faculty.

Approximately one-third of the. coursestaken by nearly eighteen hundredengineering students at Columbia aretaught by faculty members whose primaryactivities lie outside the EngineeringSchool. Many fewer students outside of theEngineering School take courses from ourfaculty, but we hope in time to increasethis number. Columbia would be greatly

Columbia University in the City of New York | New York, N. Y. 10027SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & APPLIED SCIENCE

Office of the Denn Seeley W. Mudd Building

weakened as a university if each of itsdivisions stood in isolation from all others.The Engineering School is perhaps thebest example of a division that draws uponall of the intellectual resources of theUniversity, and we hope to keep it thatway.

In offering some corrections of the ar-ticle on our reorganization printed in yourissue of 30 January, 1978,1 do not mean tobe unduly critical. The article wasassembled for the Monday edition on thebasis of a telephone call I received fromthe reporter at my home on the precedingSunday, and under such pressures thereporter did rather well. This was acomplex story, and she got most of it right.

Peter LikinsDean, School ofEngineering

Calling for the protection of coal strikers's rightsAs New York residents are well aware,

the past few years have witnessed savagecutbacks, layoffs, and the elimination ofvital social services in the city andnationally. In the name of "balancing thebudget" and "responsible spending,"thousands of jobs have been lost andmillions in wages and pension funds haveliterally been ripped out of the pockets ofthe working class and poor. And the oneforce which has the actual power to deal adecisive blow to the capitalist offensive—the working class—has thus far beenshackled by its pro-capitalist misleaders,from Meany to Shanker to Gotbaum.

The major exception to this rulenationwide—and therefore a potentialexample for the whole working class—isthe coalminers. The militant strike theyare now waging in the face of scabs,gunthugs and to some extent even theirown leadership, stands as a formidableobstacle to Carter's goal of a domesticatedworking class.

The ruthless measures to which the mine

companies are willing to resort to defendtheir profits was demonstrated once againby the murder of Mack Lewis, a retiredminer, shot five times by a hired gun-slinger of the Diamond Coal Company ashe talked to pickets at a struck site inEastern Kentucky. Far from being cowedby this savage attack, the miners haveescalated their activity, dispatchingroving picket squads to extend the in-fluence of the strike by shutting downother industries in an effort to undercut theeffects of company stockpiling. 194militants were arested when nearly 500miners converged on a coal dock in Rock-port, Indiana to prevent the transferenceof coal from rail to barge. And since nearly50 per cent of coal operations in the U.S.are non-union, the striking miners havepicketed these sights to keep scaboperations shut tight from Tennessee toMaryland.

The miners are fighting for the right tostrike—the only real safeguard of anygains wrested by miners from the owners.

The health and safety hazards, forexample, which are so common in themines, will not be eliminated by the goodwill of the coal bosses. Defeat of the strikethreatens the very existence of the UnitedMine Workers; it would also represent aserious demoralizing influence on the U.S.labor movement as a whole.

But more than ever the miners'militancy is needed to win this strike. TheMiller leadership of the UMW hasdemonstrated its allegiance, not to theinterests of class struggle, but to ham-mering out a modus vivendi with thebosses at the expense of the miners. Sincehis election, in which he brought the classenemy into the union in the name of"democracy"—to his breaking of threemajor wildcats—to his scuttling of theright to strike in the 1974 contract, Miller's"new"regime has brought the UMW to thebrink of disaster.

A new leadership, based on a class-struggle program, is needed. Such aprogram would include: election of

district-wide strike committees by massmeetings of the miners; spreading thestrike to related industries, such as steel;calling upon labor to "hot cargo"(refuse to handle) scab coal. Thesemeasures can bring the bosses to theirknees.

We of the Spartacus Youth League, anationwide socialist youth group,wholeheartedly support the miners strike.As partisans of the working class oncampus, we champion the traditions oflabor solidarity and militancy practicedby the miners. Thus we were the onlycampus organization last year whichrefused to cross the picket lines set up byColumbia campus workers during theTWU strike.

The fundamental lesson of the minersstrike is the need for a workers govern-ment to end the vicious system ofcapitalist exploitation once and for all. TheSpartacus Youth league is building a youthorganization dedicated to this goal

Spartacus Youth League

Naive evasion is not the answer to this questionMuch of the recent debate on military

funding of scientific research has beenvibrant and confused. Vivid images dfwell-intentioned professors duped intobecoming the accomplices of blood-thirstygenerals are everywhere: remember poorLord Rutherford and Hiroshima. Yet evenafter the reflections of countless amateurethicians, the hard moral issues involvedseem to have been only superficially ex-plored.

Our choice of normative models hasbeen portrayed, roughly, as between thedeontological look-where-you-want-and-don't-worry-what-results, and the moreresponsibly teleological research-should-

help-mankind. The former position hasbecome less and less popular, and is rarelyportrayed with the grandeur of a Galileopursuing truth, whatever the effect onCatholic society. The problem with thelatter approach, however, is that even ifone ignores the educational issue of howwe are supposed to train physicists topredict history, one finds that few ad-vocates of this "consequentialist" positionhave followed out their own logic.

Professor of Physics Henry Foley wasquoted in these pages recently as sayingthat scientists lacked the foresight tosuccessfully "avoid investigations whichcould lead to nefarious applications."

Then, to illustrate this fallibility, hepointed out that "when Faraday waslooking at electromagnetic in-duction ... in 1830, he didn't foreseeradar." One can almost feel the headsshaking in condemnation of this foulmisuse of honest research. One can also seethose heads buried in the sand. They haveavoided the issue. What if Faraday hadthat crystal ball, whose nonexistenceProf. Foley documents? Should he havetuned in to the slaughter of Luftwaffeaviators potentiated by radar, stopped hisresearch, and thus preserved hisacademic purity? For had those Nazipilots been spared, much of the world

might today be living under the swastika.No one wants blood on their hands, and it

is hard to argue with the contention that aninvestigator must consider the ultimateeffect of his research on humanity. But theplace of this difficult calculus has beenusurped in the public literature by theimperative that one must never personallycontribute to one's nation's militarycapacity. This is not an answer. It is anaive and simplistic evasion of the com-plex issues which must be faced in thissensitive and emotional area. SurelyColumbia deserves better than that.

E. L. Flatow

Head Residents or Lebensraum?Given the university's newest proposal

to subject students to the indignity of"doubled-up" rooms, I wish to propose anequally plausible solution to the housingshortage: eliminate several of theResidence Counselor and Head Residentrooms. Certainly upper-classmen don'tneed to have a counselor on every floor(the reason for counselors in Furnaldcompletely eludes me)—three or fourwould suffice. I know of at least oneresidence counselor in the "special

student" category who is being employedby Columbia while not actually registeredat the university, as well as a recentlydeparted head resident who was also inthat situation. While that may be perfectlylegal according to the regulations of theHousing Office, I for one find it unethical.Since most counselors (or at least those"special students" and graduate students)would probably move off campus werethere not the inducement of free room plus

$500 or $1000, at least some rooms would be

opened up.Admittedly this is not going to solve the

problems of more than 20 or 30 students.But I find it obscene that ColumbiaUniversity will continue to subsidize thehousing needs of a select few whilejeopardizing losing academically qualifiedstudents and eventually its ownreputation.

Merri RosenbergBarnard Senator

Short on talent he ain'tBy HARVEY SAWIKIN

Randy Newman's Little Criminals iswithout question his best record, and it isalso the best album of the year. There hasbeen an abundance of excellent releasesrecently (Billy Joel's, Linda Ronstadt's,Steely Dan's), but this collection of 12 ab-solutely magnificent songs towers abovethem all.

Randy Newman, a Jerseyite, has in thepast stuck to such scenes as Louisiana, 1927,and Kingfish. On Little Criminals, however,Newman sets off on a trip around the world.For example, "In Germany Before theWar" is his vision of the hollowness of pre-World War II Dusseldorf. In its hauntingfinal verse:

We lie beneath the autumn skyA£y little golden girl and I

And she lies very still—we canAlmost hear the sound ofgoosestepping

Nazi boots .

..

Newman's imagery has never been morepowerful than in "Jolly Coppers on Par-rade," which was suggested by the title ofa Swedish movie:

They're coming down the streetThey're coming right down the middle

Look how they keep the beatWhy, they're as blue as the ocean.

Newman's skill at projecting differentmoods is not confined to his lyrics, brilliantthough they are. His distinctive, gritty vocal

style consists of a souther drawl wrappingitself around different characters. In thebeautiful "Texas Girl at the Funeral of HerFather," Newman's delicate phrasingconjures up the vision he intends:

Here lam alone on the plainSun's goin' down

It's starting to rainPapa we'll gosailing.

Again his voice allows him tochange costume for the title track, a toughlittle saga of the small-time crook whosefailure is inevitable, but whose hope lingerspitifully on:

We've almost made itWe've almost made it to the top.

Newman's piano-playing is not what onewould call virtuoso, but his persistentchords tend to complement his cynicallyrics, such as on "Short People", the singlefrom this album. It's a truly funny song, andhis one repeated piano riff tends to increasethe song's sarcasm:

They got little handsAnd littleeyes

And they walk around telling great big lies.The back-up musicians that Newman has

assembled include such notables as RyCooder, and Glenn Frey ancTJoe Walsh ofthe Eagles. Newman uses them to theirfullest potential, as he does with his or-chestration. On "Texas Girl", for example,the piano stands alone in the foreground,

backed masterfully by a string section thatneither disappears nor takes over.

Randy Newman is a musical genius in allrespects; in his simple, catchy melodies, inhis arrangements, and in his vocals . . . buthis lyrics completely steal the show. He cantake us to the sunny southern sidewalk of"You Can't Fool the Fat Man;" to the earlymorning decay of "Baltimore," to the quietloneliness of "Old Man on the Farm." Heeven tells us about "Sigmund Freud's

Impersonation of Albert Einstein inAmerica:"

America, AmericaStep out into the light

You're the best dream man has everdreamed

and may all your Christmases be white.Get Little Criminals. Do it right now.

Besides being a mixture of consummatemusicianship and chuckling Jersey poetry,it stands as proof-positive that music is notonly as good as ever, but a lot better.

Bad Collins mix, supernatural novel

features

By TOM SOTERArmadale, by Wilkie Collins (Dover, 595 pp.,$5.00).Little Novels, by Wilkie Collins (Dover 244pp., $3.00).

"Among English novels of the presentday," said Victorian author AnthonyTrollope in 1876, "and among Englishnovelists, a great division is made. Thereare sensational novels and anti-sensational;sensational novelists and anti-sensational;sensational readers and anti-sensational.The novelists who are considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic. Iam realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins isgenerally supposed to be sensational."

That he certainly was—and the success ofhis third novel The Woman in White in 1860 isgenerally considered the starting point ofCollins' career.

Woman is a classic of its type, with larger-than-life villains, fast-moving events and,most importantly, a complex plot that twistsand turns through corridors of coincidenceand logic until it reaches its satisfyingconclusion. With The Moonstone, it isprobably the only one of Collins' novels thatwill achieve any kind of literary im-mortality; it is also the only Collins novelthat, as T.S. Eliot has said, "closely ap-proaches Dickens."

Not coincidentally, Collins' and Dickens'careers are closely intertwined. They metduring production of the former's 1855 playThe Frozen Deep, a melodramatic lovestory in which they both had roles. Afriendship resulted and Collins was offered ajob on Dickens' new magazine HouseholdWords. There, he produced a series of Poe-like tales of the supernatural.

Dover Books, which published a collectionof Collins' ghost stories a few years ago, hasnow come out with two more oddities. One isa lacklustre short story volume, while theother is a full-length novel. Both arereproduced from their original magazinepages.

Armadale, the novel, is a book aboutfatality— but not the sort of fatality thatbesets Thomas Hardy's characters. Here, itis more unreal—and therefore moretolerable—and the sense of gloom thatpervades Hardy novels like Jude theObscure or Tess of the D'Urbervilles isabsent.

But, like many of Hardy's short stories,Armadale deals with a supernaturalelement—the fulfillment of a multi-faceteddream—and the power of destiny.

It is, as critic J.I.M. Stewart pointed out,

"the novel in which we may feel Collins asimaginatively at his farthest out." The storydeals with two young men named AllanArmadale—both destined, through actionscommitted by their parents, to repeat thepast. There is a conniving villainess, LydiaGwilt, and a naive hero, and also a greatdeal of effective atmosphere. Although plotcontrivances are frequently evident,Armadale is fun partly because of andpartly in spite of them. "It has no meritbeyond melodrama," said T.S. Eliot in 1932,"and it has every merit that melodramacan have."

It's unfortunate that one can't say thesame about Dover's second discovery, LittleNovels, which might better be titled "TheEnd of the Road for Wilkie." Collins wasnear the end of his life when he publishedthis volume; Dickens had died over ten

years before and Collins himself, forced totake drugs for a nagging affliction, washardly as alert as he needed to be for thecomplicated plot constructions that were histrademark.

Little Novels was released in England in1879 but never in America. Its title issomething of a misnomer, .though it is insome ways appropriate since it implies agentleness that is suited to many of theseshort tales. Collins, however, was a novelist,and his writing technique relies a great dealon the Victorian novel's massive length.Consequently, these attempts at shortstories are feeble and exhibit only the ghostof Collins' great powers of construction.Most are predictable, some are effectivelyevocative, none are terribly good. The bestare "Mr. Percy and the Prophet"—whichhas some chilling moments, "Mr. Cosquayand the Lady"—which contains a few nicetwists, and "Mr. Lismore and the Widow"—the only truly surprising story in the bunch.

The detective short story and the ghosttale were better handled by Poe in the 1830'sand '40's and Conan Doyle in the '90's, andcoincidentally, Doyle's Sherlock Holmesmade his appearance not long after LittleNovels took its bow. If nothing else, Collins'book indicates the foundations on whichDoyle and his successors were to build.

Perhaps, however, realist AnthonyTrollope summed up Collins' great virtuesand flaws best.

"Wilkie Collins," said Trollope in hisautobiography, "seems so to construct his(novels) that he not only, before writing,plans everything on, down to the minutestdetail from the beginning to the end; butthen plots it back again to see that there isno piece of necessary dove-tailing whichdoes not dove-tail with absolute accuracy.The construction is most accurate and mostwonderful. But I can never lose the taste ofthe construction. The author seems alwaysto be warning me to remember thatsomething happened at exactly half-pasttwo o'clock on Tuesday morning; or that awoman disappeared from the road justfifteen yeards beyond the fourth milestone.One is constrained by mysteries andhemmed in by difficulties, knowing,however, that the mysteries will be madeclear, and the difficulties overcome at theend of the third volume."

Whether one agrees with Trollope or not,Armadale is the perfect book for a long",snowy weekend in the country.

February 15,1978 COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR Page FiveCOLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR4-5