University of Miami - Ibis Yearbook (Coral Gables, FL)

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Yaffe: I worked on two of the national Mora- toria against the war, both in October and November of 1969, and on the Student Strike over the Cambodian invasion in the spring of 1970. I also spent a lot of time working with student government towards changing the dis- ciplinary proceedures at UM with an eye toward including some student representation in the proceedings. Passarello: What do you feel was your most valuable experience as an undergraduate in preparing you for your current work? Yaffe: It ' s difficult to pinpoint any one activity. I will say this, though: I don ' t think it was my classroom work. It was much too formal when I was here. Passarello: As a relative newcomer to the polit- ical scene, what effect, if any, do you feel the enfranchisement of the 18-to-21 -year-old age group has had on your immediate future and the future of young people in politics as a pro- fession? Passarello: What exactly do you feel was the value of your prescribed curriculum in your degree program in preparing you for your present work? Yaffe: I think that the tendency today is to teach politics how it was set up to be, and not how it actually operates. Yaffe: As far as I know, registration at UM has been fairly disorganized with regard to really putting large numbers of registered student votes to work on candidates and issues. I ' ve fought to open up registration in Pennsylvania to make it easier for the young people to regis- ter. I can tell you stories about how roads were moved to pass over a certain man ' s land, or to run up the profit for a politically favored con- tractor. Deals are how politics work. Students seem to think that because of the em- phasis on Federal aid to education and the in- volvement of the Federal government in the school, that it is with the President, and Congress that their interests primarily lie. In re- ality, the state controls many and more far- reaching aspects of everyday life. Education, zoning, and highways are only a few of the areas which state and local government direct- ly controls. I can ' t say that I approve of the way things work. But until we begin educating our students of political science in the realities of political life, we present them with a degree that leaves them only half-prepared to do what they set out to accomplish. The pressure, the bribes, the advertising, all of this is not considered a part of politics. Instead, they teach you that The People pull the voting lever, and that ' s how The People vote ....

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interview by Tony Passarello (Editor ' s note: The academic year 1969-70 represented one of the last years in which spontaneous, massive student involvement in the affairs of the policies of the United States and the world was the order of the day. Part of the special significance of this kind of activism is attributable to the fact that the vast majority of UM students of 1969 were still a part of that mass of half-citizens who often paid taxes, served in the nation ' s armed forces, and carried out other obligations to the government of the United States without having the privilege of choosing its leaders. Peter Yaffe, as an executive assistant to the vice-president of the then Undergraduate Student Government, was responsible for the initiation and coordination of UM ' s partic- ipation in the national Moratoria against the Vietnam War in the autumn of 1969. A 1970 graduate of the University of Miami, Yaffe was in Miami Beach in the summer of 1972 in his capactiy as executive assistant to the Governor of Pennsylvania ' s delegation to the Democratic National Convention. This exclusive Ibis Illustrated interview was recorded in the lobby of the Pennsylvania delegation ' s quarters at Miami Beach ' s Barcelona Hotel;) Passarello: Peter, it ' s quite a jump from being a newly-graduated A.B. in government to becoming the executive assistant to the Gover- nor of Pennsylvania in two short years. Is this sort of attainment completely out of the reach of a UM graduate today? Yaffe: Not to any student who ' s interested enough in going into politics to get into it on more than a textbook level while he ' s in school. I began seriously working in 1968 while I was still in school as an advance man for Eugene McCarthy. Everyone knows how that one turned out. My second candidate, a man by the name of Norville Reese who was running for state senate in my home state of Pennsylvania from Philadelphia, also lost. But the association was valuable, as it later turned out. After I graduated from UM in 1970, I was spending a summer vacation in Massachusetts, where Reese called me to ask if I wanted to help in a campaign he was working on for the Pennsyl- vania governorshop. The candidate was named Shapp, and, during the campaign, I became a very intergral part of his personal staff. After the election, he offered many of us jobs in the ad- ministration. That ' s how it happened. Passarello: In what types of political activity were you engaged on campus prior to your graduation?

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I .AST WORD D N PROTESTS REMERESS.RO a farewell to latent militancy