Newspapers / Saint Mary’s School Student … / Nov. 1, 1988, edition 1 / Page 2
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The Belles November 1988 Editorial It Doesn’t Make Sense Censorship We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet! By Jennifer Mason Sitting in my sociology class, my mind starts to drift. From some where in the classroom I hear something that doesn’t sound right. “What?!” I yell loudly as I come back to this world, “What did you say?!” Dr. Bach looks at me with her “so you finally decided to join us” look. “I said that 78% of women in our society end up in dead end jobs with little pay as comppared to 40% for men.” This is news to me and I’m sure it’s news to most of you, too. At St. Mary’s, we are programmed to strive for the best jobs our society has to offer. But the real facts are hard to ignore. Can you imagine that only 15% of the women in this country are in professional or technical jobs. Only 15%!! And out of this 15%, fewer than one percent are what we think of as professional women, jobs such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, writers, sci entists and even college professors (col lege professors!!!). I think tfs hard for us to think that in the 80’s there is such a thing as sexual discrimination anymore. But there is and it’s real and it’s out there wait ing for us when we leave here. But the question is why is this true? There’s two reasons. Women are em ployed in lower-skilled, lower-paid posi tions. Even in such jobs as clerical work, where women dominate by 73%, women earn 35% less than men doing the same job. So it’s time for us, the Up and Coming Generation, to start realizing this and to stop thinking the problem is not there any more. It is and it’s going to be there when we graduate and start looking for a job. What can we do about it? A lot. We can make sure our friends who are under the same mistaken impression we were know the real story, support politicians who stand' for equal rights for women and join groups that inform others of this injustice. This problem will not go away until we join to gether to make it!! By Kristie Hoffstedder This year there will be no volleyball or soccer teams at SMC; instead there will be cross country. Did the school take into con sideration the number of students that would be upset when volleyball and soccer were replaced with cross country? Vol leyball got started last year when enough students banned together and formed a team. Obviously the students wanted to play volleyball. This year the school is claiming there is not sufficient interest to continue the sport. Did the school hold try outs? Did the school take a survey? Or did the school ask returning players their opin ions? Is it fair to make these returning players compete for one of the only four positions available on cross country if they choose to continue in a varsity sport? Yet basketball still exist when last year’s team had such little interest they could barely meet minimum requirements for a team status. Soccer seems to show the most interest of all the sports available at SMC, but stu dents will not be able to play soccer this year except for intramurals. Intramurals are welcomed by people who only want to play in their spare time, but returning players and new students want a team that is com petitive. Students want soccer on a regular full-time basis to learn and perfect skills. Teams provide unity among students and provide for self-discipline. The opinion of students should be the determining fac tor in keeping or dropping a sport regard less of what the sport is. After all, it is the students who play and compete, hot the administrators. The bot tom line is students want volleyball and soc cer. By Elizabeth Stephenson Censorship is the deletion or excision of parts of published materials; it bans, pro hibits, suppresses, proscribes, removes, labels or restricts materials. Our rights to freedom are challenged most often by cen-1 sorship of newspapers, books, theater and' movies. In my opinion, censorship of books, which takes place in many public' libraries, challenges the first amendment' to the U.S. Constitution, freedom of reli-' gion, speech, and of the press. Banned | Book Week, which took place in early Sep-! tember, was sponsored by the American i Library Association to try to bring attention | to the challenges to our freedom to read. ‘ Many pieces of classical literature are' being challenged or are currently banned from communities. Surprisingly, over 80% of the books do not contain “genuine por nography,” but true-to-life human emotions (Continued on page 4) In Response to the Response By Jennifer Mason When I first saw the Dean’s response to my article “It Doesn’t Make Sense” (Oc tober, 1988, The Belles), I must admit the thought that ran through my mind was “this lady doesn’t knot the policies that she helped put into play!!” So after I calmed down and took a deep breath, I decided that there was no way that she couldn’t know the policies. So I set out to find out what exactly is the punishment for skipping classes if we didn’t do “menial tasks.” First I asked stu dents, tons of them, what the policy was. They all told me that I was right. Then I asked some teachers. Their answers were more varied. I got answers from “Yes, you are right” to “I don’t know” to “the Academic Dean has to be right,” but the fact was not one teacher I asked knew for sure and only one came even close to the truth! By this time I was starting to get mad. Why was it that NO ONE knew such a sim ple policy as what our punishment was if we missed class?! So my last step was to call the Dean of Students office and ask them. I did not talk to Dean Hack over the phone but my an swer to my question “did we have to do menial tasks if we skip class” was Letter to the Editors: Dear Editors: I am writing in response to the Editorial “It Doesn’t Make Sense” In the October, 1988 issue of The Belles. The editorial ob viously voices serious student concerns, but it also contains factual errors and mis taken assumptions. No student who has skipped class has been required to perform “menial tasks,” or work in any way for the College. Instead, class attendance is considered as part of the evaluation in each course, and faculty, in written class policies, have made stu dents aware of the extent to which class attendance contributes to the grade. The faculty do report all absences of high school students to my office, and we are required by our accrediting agencies to keep class attendance records for high school students. Reported absences are then checked against the excuses issued by the Health Center and the Dean of Stu dents. I am flattered that anyone thinks I am capable of running quickly anywhere, but in reality it is a slow and time-consuming process. Reports are sent weekly to parents, not to punish students, nor to treat students as children. Instead, the purpose is to give parents information they need in order to encourage their daughters to develop a sense of responsibility and make wise de cisions. The reports also alert the parents of boarding students when health problems have caused their daughters to miss class. Our goal at Saint Mary’s is to educate our students and prepare you for continued study. We can do that best when you are in class. The more adult members of the student body understand that and do not cut. However, for students who still need help in making adult decisions, it makes perfect sense to me, instead of taking puni tive action like weekend detention or strict campus, to enlist the support of everyone available, including the parents who are paying the bills. I would also point out that, although high school students at Saint Mary’s often take college courses, they are not otherwise expected to “behave like col lege students” or “think like college stu dents,” nor do most of you “deal with a college student’s work load.” One could in fact reverse the final quotation of the edito rial and say that at Saint Mary’s those who act like adults are treated like adults. In conclusion, I hope that I have clarified the facts for readers of The Belles. The assumptions and actions based on those ■acts are always open to discussion and /aluation. Dean Watson answered with a very positive “Yes”!! I get off the phone thinking “I’ve got the best news story of the century!” The thing I wanted now was a quote from Dean Hack saying this was true. I ran quickly over to the Dean of Students office and ask her. “No, that is incorrect” was my answer!! You don’t get any punishment except a note home to your parents if you skip a class!!! And so, you ask, what is the moral of this story? Well, I’m not sure myself, except that next time I need information that is important and concerns the policies of this school, I know not to go to my fellow stu dents, faculty, or even the people who work in the Dean of Student’s Office because THEY DON’T KNOW!!! Well, one thing my search did uncover is the inability of the Staff to communicate even the most simple policies to the students and even to the faculty! But that is only part of my answer to Dean Watson’s editorial. I know that I can sit here and rip apart every line and say the very fact that we have class schedules the way we do requires us to at least “act like col lege students,” but 1 won’t. It would be like fighting windmills: The Dean is always going to think she’s right and I’m always going to think I’m right and that’s going to get us no where but in a circle. But what I do want to say is that she missed the whole point of my article! My article was not to say that “isn’t it horrible that we have to do menial tasks” or to say that we don’t want our parents to “encourage” us “to develop a sense of responsibility and make wise decisions!” That was not the point at all. My point was that the administration is treating us like children by sending a note home to our parents every time we skip a class. 1 think that the staff is sitting around together, wondering why it is that the honor code doesn’t work any more. Well, the honor code is based on the fact that we, the students, are trusted until we are proven that we do not deserve that trust. Sending a note home to our parents im plies that we are not trusted. It is no wonder that the students don’t put any trust in the honor code any more. How can we when the Staff doesn’t put any trust in us any more? Saint VIary's Coi.lrge 900 Hillsborough Strer' Raleigh. North Carolina 27603-1689 Editors Writers Photographer Advisor Sheri Roberson Jennifer Mason Jenny Caine Katherine Cioninger Elizabeth Evans Cariyie Herbert Kristie Hoffstedder Lisa Morris Keisea Parker Suzanne Quebedeaux Atussa Raoufian Charlotte Sears Elizabeth Stephenson Cathy Thompson Eilen Zimmerman Atussa Raoufian Michaei Schroeder if B t %
Saint Mary’s School Student Newspaper
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Nov. 1, 1988, edition 1
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