Newspapers / St. Andrews University Student … / Feb. 19, 1976, edition 1 / Page 2
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The Lance Lin Thompson Michael Greene Managmg Editor Mick Meisel Asst. Editor/Sports Rowe Campbell Asst. Editor/Business Doug Mushet Layout Eiditor Nanci Boggs, C.O. Spann Circulation Managers Mark Powell, Annie Myers Advertising Managers Billy Howard Photo Coordinator Dr. W. J. Loftus Advisor Staff: Chuck Andrews Clay HamUton Lin Potts Tom Brown Suzanne Hogg Curtis Sawyer Terry Clark Kim Johnson TomStoecker Beth Cleveland Myra McGinnis David Swanson Joyce Dew Lanie Noblitt Celeste Tillson Richard Durham Rufus Poole Lisa Wollman Printing by The Laurinburg Exchange Co. • • • iiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiniiinnnininiiiniininiinnn™ What The Letter Really Said iiiii To the Editor: In last week’s LANCE you mentioned a letter than the art students sent to the Board of Trustees. I would like to complement you on your amazing ability to summarize a letter which you did not read. However, I do feel that this summary as well as the tone of your “objective” front page article constitute a serious breach in journalistic ethics. I think you will do well to remember that the editorial page is the place to express opinions be they yours or the President’s. A copy of the letter sent by the art students to the Trustees follows. I think the student body should know what it really said. Sincerely, Lisa A. Tillson Members of the Board of Trustees: We, as students of the art department, strongly urge you to reconsider your decision concerning tenure Prust on Smith Editorial To The Editor, THE LANCE Your views on the Smith tenure issue in last week’s LANCE struck me as weak sighted and a little distorted in four respects The first two of the corrections I try to apply below are, I believe, equally applicable to certain views expressed by the College’s administraion recently. 1) You claim there was no violatirai of due process. A con sideration of due process will show you very clearly that the process is a process of the faculty. The faculty determines whom of its members are to be tenured. We take that function very seriously. The strength of SA’s faculty derives in large measure from our taking it very seriously. Administrators are paid to keep records, raise fun^, tell the public about the im portant things going on here, recruit students....that sort of thing. But they are not paid to tell the faculty who they are. The faculty telling itself who it is is the process we call giving tenure. We take that act so seriously because in that act we evaluate each other. We say what it is that defines excellence among us. And by those standards articulated and applied, we make a momentous decision, not only about our colleague but about our- selves-the decision is no less than that of who we will now be, corporately. So seriously do we take that corporate function that we make sure at every stage that indeed it will be a corporate decision when it is finally made. Thoughtful student evaluations are carefully solicited, read and listened to, a committee of faculty people reprsenting the academic fields of the colleague in question discuss and appraise his or her professionalism, abilities, and the promise that that teacher’s talents hold for the College. Then yet another committee, representative of tht faculty as a whole, makes a final decision for the faculty. That is due process. Now, of course, you ask, but doesn’t the admuiistration have veto power over that decision? Of course, and properly so, I’d even add! Just as the U.S. President must have the authority to declare marshall law in a real crunch, a college president must reserve the right to override normal decision-making processes if need be. But quite clearly this veto power is an emergency procedure which must be justified as such. Read for yourself: “The governing board and president should, on questions of faculty status, as in other matters where the faculty has primary responsibility, concur with the facidty judgment except in rare instances and for compelling reasons which should be stated in detail.” The founders of this College and its present trustees wisely made it an emergency-only administrative prerogative because they suspected that administrators are sometimes not very wise in making such decisions. Never before have their suspicions been encouraged with such embarrassing dazzle. 2) All of which lead me to the observation that you are as ap parently Mind to Mark Smith’s professionalism and his value to this community as the administration is! You took it hook line and sinker when they told you that the decision “was based solely upon professional considerations.” Make a list of the top SA faculty members “based solely upon professional con siderations.” Think about who's doing something in his or her own field whidi is gaining the notice and respect of other professionals in that field. Measure it any way you can think of: publications, appearances, critical notice, leadership in professional organizations, creative productivity-you name it. If Mark Smith’s name doesn’t place in the top 5, I’d damn sure pay to see your list. 3) It’s not just that you got fogged over by meaningless bureaucratic double - think. You didn’t even wince! Where is your anger? Are you so unaware of the real vitality of this com munity that you don’t see what taking Mark Smith away would do to us? Let me refresh your vision. In a small college the valuable members are those whose energy energizes the rest of us. They are the people whose creative energies evoke creative energies in others around them. We create in response to them, amplifying the energies in turn. Think of SA as a kind of weather map. We exist to generate storms of creativity, high energy cen ters, as it were. Bad weather consists of long low depressions, sometimes settling in over one or another area, drizzling hum drum hot air monotony. All of us avoid those places like a bad course in Winter Term. We seek those areas of SA life where good energies are stirring things up. (Really, you know, this weather-map model is far more useful for seeing what’s hap pening here than is your tired liberal model of the college as “a labyrinthine maze of conunittees”!) Now, thinking of all those live spots on our map, notice how astonishingly many of them are alive with Mark and Jan. Not only in the Art Program and in campus life, but in the festivals, theater productions, Curveship Press, curriculum reform, ST. ANDREWS REVIEW, art shows! Good Gosh, how few of us on the faculty can be said to be claimed by so many good things! And if seeing all this, you register not even a snort of disapproval at this affront to our judgment, this insensitivity to what is best in our College’s life,, then one truly is lead to wonder what could make you angry. 4) Finally, Mr. Editor, you greet us in the past tense! You tell us the news as thought the whole mess of pottage, bought with the faculty’s birthright, has been eaten and swallowed, lumps and all, and now we’re just sitting around belching and taking tums and trying to forget. While administrators try to keep the lid on, you have the whole pot “moved to the back burner.” ActuaDy there’s plenty of steam. You’ve been fooled by the surface cahn. This is too important a matter, both because of the questions it raises about faculty prerogatives and the grievousness of the error in judgment about Smith...too im portant to cool off just yet. What has and is going on is this;' We’re tlyingto find ways of Ulustratingto the President the in tensity of our feeUngs and their legitimacy. We’re trying to find calm and reasonable ways out of that “no win status,” as your editorial rightly called it. And we wll continue. I share your hope that this awkward and ugly matter finds a J-iy But. it be m resoltioTSe'Sfch S Smith as Cordially, Dick Prust An ^^AlumnV^ View of St, Andrews To the Editor: The alumni, all of us, are at an undisclosable vacation resort. We will remain here until we feel reasonably safe to show our faces at good ole (rah, rah, rah) St. Andy. Some of us heard there was a controversy boiling (possibly just simmering) and as St. A degree holders are natural pacifists. Political decisions are for Neal and Co. (they always have been) and since he is on leave YOU (to quote the Dodge sheriff) ah in a heahp uh trubble. Normally the standard reply in trouble is “Go see the Dean.” But that doesn’t seem applicable. Well all I can say is you must of got a bunch of hell raising freshmen to upset good ole (rah, rah, rah) Ms. Neylans. Well greetings from the sunny beaches of - - Lotsa Love, The Aluminums Editor’s note: With regard to Ms. Tillson’s letter, I might note that, having been pro mised a copy of the letter several times over the last week and a half and having never gotten one, I was forced to ask someone who said they’d seen it what it was about the fault lies with my source. I wiU be more wary of that person in the future. L. Hiompson for Mark Smith. We are ca cerned that your decision v jeopardize the stability of thl department and the future ol St. Andrews in the field of art During the six years Mail Smith has been at St. drews, the art departme^ has developed a strong and well-rounded program. At tL present time, we feel that thi strengtii of the program evident not only within thl department, but throughoif the school. As students we feel that thd quality of the art departmenl cannot be maintained il qualified professors are noi given tenure. Constantly changing professors me constant changes in thd department because of thd nature of the discipline of artj The instability of the department will affect its reputation which will seriously jeopardize ou futures. Unless this decision i^| changed, we feel it is ourfj obligation to discourage)! prospective art students fron^I coming to St. Andrews. At a|| time when St. Andrews is so|| concerned with attracting ajf larger number of students, itjl is extremely important tojj retain all professors of th^I caliber of Mark Smith. In anylj institution of higher education) 1 concerned with maintaining all quality reputation, goofflj programs are supportedjJ rather than destroyed. Th^j art program deseves suchj] support. We are asking, therefore^ that you reconsider you^ decision in light of its effec on the art department as wel] as on the entire school. No* only the art students, but 1 entire student body is con cemed about this decisioi^ We sincerely hope that Board of Trustees will seriously re-examine situation. Respectfully, Barbara Parker Julie Cramer Ellen Tosh Linda Clawson Margaret T. Wilson L. ,a A. Tillson Warren Anderson Alice Horn Michael McOwen Nancy Mills Robertson Linda Carson Colby Gordon June C. Williams Mary Parker Charles Wrenn, Jr. Kristina Gudmundson ‘Helen Halsey Lisa Wollman Ann Oden Cathy Bell Margaret Godwin Tony Ridings Page Leary Leigh Middleditch Melissa Tufts Celeste Tillson Jean M. Howard R.W. Howard Dale L. Smith
St. Andrews University Student Newspaper
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Feb. 19, 1976, edition 1
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