(Builfnrbian
Volume LXVIII, No. 11
Rugby...The Impossible Dream?
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photo by Carol Nieukirk
by Doc Roberts
Who or what is the Guilford Col
lege Rugby Football Club? As far
as Guilford College is concerned,
no such animal officially exists.
However, there is a group of
students who travel around the
state of North Carolina to play
against other club teams.
Because of much 'red tape,' they
have not been granted club status
as of yet. Says player /coach Col
in Vallance-Owen, "The only
place where we're not the
Learning Is Occurring at Guilford
While some may have their
doubts, the above shocking
headline does have a basis in ac
tual scientific fact. Learning is
occuring at Guilford College.
Who, you may ask, is learning
anything at this point in the year,
when it's "Just spring; and the
world is puddle-lucious"? How
should one even presume to
"learn" anything in the unfor
tunate work-week which fills in
the gap between Spring Break
and Serendipity? And just who
are these preposterous in
dividuals who insist on doing
what they are supposed to?
The answer to these (and many
other questions which will not be
asked in this article) may be
found in a small room in King
Hall, where eleven white male
albino rats are learning; diligent
ly and quite successfully, how to
perform for rewards and avoid
punishments in a "designed en
vorinment" known as a Skinner
Box. The rats are learning
because, unlike the various in
habitants of the Guilco Campus
(both students and those of us at
tempting to impersonate
students), they have no choice.
From the moment of their con-
Guilford College RFC is on the
Guilford College campus."
Vallance-Owen began putting
the team together a year ago,
first playing semi-organized
games against area clubs. Most
of the top schools in the state, in
cluding N.C. State, U.N.C., Wake
Forest, and Davidson, all have
rugby clubs. Vallance-Owen set
about trying to make it an official
Guilford club, but was hindered
by "the system." "At the time,"
according to him, "there was no
organized list of requirements to
By Heidi A. Hall
ception the fate of these animals
is sealed. They are lab bred
animals: genetically pure and
void of any inconvenient varia
tions in appearance, white
haired, red-eyed, never to breed,
as sterile and as faceless as the
men in a Magritte painting. The
existence and practice of
breeding lab animals allows
researchers to do their work
without having to resort to
"domesticated" animals.
The eleven rats are the objects
of research which is being con
ducted by students of a
psychology class entitled
"Learning and Behavior
Modification" taught by Claire
Morse. The students are doing
this work because it helps them
get actual experience in working
with animals in the area of
behavior. Hopefully, this work
will help these students get a feel
for what is involved and what the
strengths and weaknesses are in
this type of research. According
to Morse, the class is going very
well with the rats learning a good
bit, and the students probably
learning something as well.
The rats are worked by a pair
of students at the same time
Guilford College, Greensboro, N.C. 27410
work with." Consequently, it
became a day-to-day process of
submitting a proposal for club
status, getting it back unapprov
ed with a request for another
signature, then getting that
signature only to have the pro
posal rejected again for some
other reason.
Last year, after much
frustrating administrative work,
Vallance-Owen thought that the
proposal was finally complete. It
passed through the Athletic Coun
cil, but then the Administrative
every day for a 30—minute
stretch. The Skinner Boxes used
consist of a bar, which, if pressed
by the rats, will deliver to their
hot little paws a pellet of food.
The rats soon learn that if they
press the bar they will obtain a
pellet, and Presto— learning has
occured. There are several other
variations on this theme which
have been sucessful. The rats
have learned to be aware of and
respond to a signal light- because
if ignored, this light will be
followed by a loud noise which is,
presumably, not desirable. If the
rats press the bar, however, the
noise will be canceled out. In
another variation the rats learn
that they must allow a certain
amount of time to pass between
bar-pushing for food pellets;
pushing continuously is futile
since the pellets are only released
after certain lag-periods. Some of
the rats have even learned to
"count"; they are aware that
they must press the bar a certain
number of times (up to ten) in
order to recerve a pellet.
And why, in a college as sen
sitized to women's issues as
Guilford is, are the rats all male?
Is this just another attempt to ex-
Council shot it down on the
grounds that they had not ac
quired team insurance. He had
never been told about insurance;
he had assumed that that would
be taken care of after they had
become an official club. And so
the team hangs in limbo.
Athletic insurance for club
teams runs generally at SIOO,OOO
per player, and the college is
liable for anything above that.
Dr. Herb Appenzeller, Guilford's
Athletic Director, believes that
the insurance question is the
largest problem facing the would
be club. "The college does not
want to be slapped with a $500,000
lawsuit if someone is seriously in
jured," he says. So until the col
lege is sure that it will not be
financially responsible for the
club, it will not grant it club
status. He speculated that one
solution to the problem would be
for the players to have their
parents agree to cover any
medical expenses above the
club's insurance policy, thus
alleviating the college of any
responsibility.
Since last semester, after ex
periencing Vallane-Owen's
frustrating attempt to gain club
status for the team, the ad
ministration has established an
organized list of requirements for
becoming a club sport. He hopes
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photo by Megan Trend
clude females from the
laboratory? No such conspiracy
intended. Female white rats have
an estrus cycle which repeats
itself every five days, and this
can make their lab performance
less than consistent.
What future does the world hold
for eleven albino, sun-sensitive,
well-educated x rat alumni of
Guilford College? Do they have
career plans and how has their
time spent at Guilford helped
them develop their own unique
potential? Some of the students
might keep the animals as pets
(OFF CAMPUS), but it is not en
couraged. Some of the rats have
been given names and per
sonalities have emerged, but they
are not pets. More likely the
animals will be put to sleep at the
end of this semester.
The point of this particular
March 15, 1985
that his work has at least made it
easier for other groups to go
through the process of achieving
club status. Mark Wagner and
Matt Burt are now going through
the steps in another attempt to
make the Guilford College RFC
official.
Until then, the ruggers will con
tinue to play off-campus. Coach
Geoff Miller, administrator of the
college's athletic facilities, has
threatened to bring formal
judicial charges against
Vallance-Owen and the rest of the
team if they practice or play on
college property. Thank God
(haha), the Lutheran Church on
New Garden Rd. (near the soft
ball fields) has graciously agreed
to let the team practice on their
soccer field.
The rugby team has grown im
pressively. Starting out with only
Vallance-Owen, who had played
in Ireland, and a handful of
basically inexperienced players,
the group has enlarged and
developed to where there is now
sometimes fierce competition for
starting berths at the matches.
Rugby is a unique sport, for both
the player and the spectator, and
hopefully the team will soon be
able to play some home games
when they become an official
club team.
research is to familarize students
with the techniques so that they
can perhaps one day carry out
research on their own. The point
of researching Learning and
Behavior Modification, in
general, is so that the knowledge
gain in the laboratory can be ap
plied to the "real world"
specifically to human learning
and behavior. It is no longer 1984,
so I will not bother to dig back up
the inevitable and tiresome com
parison to Orwell's "thought con
trol". Like most scientific
research, behavior and learning
scientists are inspired to searrh
for the helpful and the good.
Humankind has profited im
mensely in the last 200 years
from research done in
laboratories in animals and
continue to, at the expenst
these animals.