Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Nov. 19, 1975, edition 1 / Page 6
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Join the Fast As many as 450 million people throughout the developing world are partly or totally dependent upon the United States for food aid in the event of a major crop failure in their own lands. The mercilessness of weather, floods and other destructive natural forces quite often leaves large numbers of these individuals on the edge of starvation. It is easy to be complacent about world problems in the removed serenity of Chapel Hill, where most students, faculty and staff members rarely encounter even the poverty and hunger in Orange County, much less the malnutrition and starvation of the Sahile. But the YM-YWCA and its Hunger Action Committee will not let us grow complacent. The Y has sponsored several activities in recent 'semesters to draw attention to the plight of the world's less developed nations and to elicit support for programs designed to receive some Student leadership I Transience a limit? In various positions and capacities, students of this U niversity have some control over the direction of campus programs and the policy-guiding information received by the administration. There are some true leadership positions for students, although for the most part student leadership is hobbled at the outset because the administration retains most of the real power in the University. This weekend some student leaders will meet with representatives of the administration and the faculty in a conference to discuss the governance of the University and the problems confronting all members of this academic community. Conceived by Student Body President Bill Bates, the weekend conference may be the critical accomplishment or failure of Bates' presidency. If the conference is the birthplace of a permanent student-faculty-administration consortium, the entire University will benefit. So it is incumbent upon us to consider the role of student leadership and some of the obstacles to its effectiveness. - Students are the most transient element of a University as most finish their academic pursuits in four or five years. Faculty members usually stay at least seven years, even if denied tenure. And administrators remain even longer, in most cases, in one position or another. It is easy for the administration to convince students that the student perspective is flawed by the very transience of the student population. Ideas have been tried before, and have failed; particular systems have been traditionally used, and have been successful. Wisdom inheres to administrators not only because of their age and maturity but also because of their historical perspective of the University. That, at any rate, is the argument that transience limits the effectiveness of student leadership. In fact, however, the problem of transience afflicts the current core of administrators with whom students have occasion to interact. Chancellor Ferebee Taylor has been here only three and a half years. Dean of Student Affairs Donald Boulton and Director of Housing James Condie have similar short tenures. That places these gentlemen in the same time perspective as most of the senior class. If students would become active in campus affairs as freshmen and if student organizations would institutionalize record keeping and annual reports and recommendations, the difference in perspective between students and administrators would not be so great as to damn the concerns of students and student suggestions as "transient" and "temporal." A greater obstacle to student leadership effectiveness is the rushed transfer of power each spring as student government officers, dormitory and Greek leaders, Graduate and Professional Student Federation officials and other leaders experience a massive turnover in personnel. Elected officers must learn new roles, confront immediate demands and adjust to new responsibilities, Cole C. Campbell Editor Ear Wnl 83rd Year of Editorial Freedom 1 a Wednesday, November 19, 1975 of their sorrow. This semester, beginning at 6 p.m. today and ending at 6 p.m. on Thursday, the Y is sponsoring a Fast for a World Harvest. The fast is an attempt to make us aware of the hunger of the poor and an attempt to raise money to send to agencies working to feed the starving. Those participating in the fast will contribute the money that would have been spent for a day's meals. That money will be divided evenly between the Inter-Church Council, which will use it to help feed the hungry in this area, and Oxfam America, an international organization which aids small farmers in underdeveloped nations. In the name of recognizing our own humanity, and in an effort to assist those in great need, we ought to join the Y and its Hunger Action Committee in observance of this fast. There are millions of our neighbors depending on us. all while coping with the end of a frantic semester and with the flush of election victory. By the time the new leadership is securely in office, the semester has elapsed and summer has intervened. The fall semester seems short as February elections are only a few months away. To confuse matters more, the new leadership receives a flurry of invitations from impressive members of the administration. Social functions between students and important figures in the administration are useful in letting one group get to know the other, but there exists a great risk that student leaders will become intoxicated with their own self-importance and think of themselves as part of a special "inner circle" of University elites. It is possible that in later confrontations between . the student interest and the interests of the administration, should such confrontations arise, a student leader may capitulate to the administration's position in order not to offend a prestigious administrator who might help him or her in further academic pursuits at a graduate, professional or postgraduate level. As one student leader has said privately, "It doesn't hurt to have a dean or two on your side." This kind of disorderly transition and intoxicating intimacy need not cripple effective student leadership. In many instances, in probably the majority of instances, the student interest and the administration interest coincide. But the risk of ineffective student action exists, and in some cases students have acted to preserve the administration position above all else when controversy arises. Finally, student leadership is inhibited by a tendency toward internalism, the placement of primary concern upon internal procedure and power plays. This has especially been a problem afflicting student government. Student leaders in Suite C place their first concern in the allocation and policing of approximately $320,000 in student fees in their control. Their second most important concern seems to be parliamentary procedure, tinkering with bylaws, appointments and constitutions and maneuvering for political advantage and peer approval. Constructive investigation of, and recommendations concerning, pressing problems like housing sign-up, academic affairs and student rights are handled, if at all, by student government in the conduct of a few public hearings and in the passage of resolutions in a moment of crisis, as in response to the Faculty Council proposal to change the grading scale. But none of these limitations, or risks, are insurmountable. Given greater responsibility and input into the governance of the University, and made cognizant of its own failings, student leadership can contribute to the advancement of the University in a fashion acceptable to students and nonstudents alike. What students need now is the opportunity to share vital decision-making with other segments of the University. Jim Grimsley Managing Editor Greg Porter Associate Editor Jim Roberts News Editor Robin Clark Features Editor Susan Shackelford Sport Editor Barnie Day Projects Editor Joyce Fitzpatrick Graphic Arts Editor Mill , . - TX - NSC0 . jvjSS VTHIS Roger Swearingen Tenure column lacks clarity I hope that Professor Casado's emphatic although somewhat incoherent column on UNC versus Podunk (DTH, 12 November) is not his last word. Throughout the essay, true statements are made; indeed almost all of Professor Casado's remarks are truisms. One therefore hopes that he will be given space in a future column to commit himself to some specifications, especially of degree. "The hiring, firing, promotion or tenure of UNC professors," Professor Casado writes, "is not only governed by success or failure in publishing but by success or failure in teaching." And "there are other considerations as well." This is the familiar triad of publications, teaching and departmental or university service, and it is presented in a purely additive way: not only, but also, and as well. I would be grateful to learn, in a future essay from Professor Casado, what the relative importance of each of these seems to him actually to be at UNC just now, and what in his opinion their relative importance ought to be. What are the acceptable trade-offs? Which of the three should be valued most and why; and how should the real distinctions be made to separate from the many who are called the very few who can be chosen? Second, I would appreciate clarification of a seeming contradiction. Teaching and service count, we are told in the second column. But in the third it is said that UNC professors "realize that publishing.. .will guarantee promotion." Regardless of teaching or service? How can all three be said to matter if one of them offers a "guarantee"? There are major questions here about the actual value which can be or is attached to the Perils of To the editor: Want to be famous? Want to win a court case? Then stand on your soap box and cry discrimination. Thousands will come to your aid. Hearts will go out to you. You can win your suit, and then write a book. The big ones get movies. Jane Cheryl Rosenstock is going about it in the right way. But before too many people send in their contributions, I'd like to present a few thoughts which I believe she has overlooked. Students' tuition can not possibly build a Kenan Lab or a Wilson Library. Money for such expensive facilities must come from our state government. The funds are supplied to the state government through what are known as taxes. These taxes are paid by citizens of North Carolina, and not by the people of New York. My parents were raised in this state, and ever since they were old enough they've been working here, having taxes deducted from their pay. For years before I was born my parents were, in effect, paying to send me to this or some other state-supported institution. The state would not have refunded their money if 1 had stayed home and been a mill worker. Every other working person in this state has been paying to send his children to this school, regardless of whether or not those children exist. UNC knows that without the support of North Carolina's people, it could not survive. So it fulfills its obligation to North Carolina residents by serving them before it serves non-residents, and by charging these residents less tuition. Nothing else would be fair to the people who pay for this university. The suit points out that the Rosenstock family owns several corporations in North Carolina, which pay N.C. taxes. Good, we can use the money. But the taxes my parents pay ar. deducted from their personal incomes. If Rosenstock's company wants to enter college, let it put in an application. Miss Rosenstock's lawyer claims that UNC has infringed upon her rights of interstate travel by not letting her in this school. No one said she couldn't come to North Carolina, and no one said that she couldn't be educated in this state. It isn't Carolina's fault that other applicants were more qualified. There are numerous schools left which are just as good from which she may choose. If Carolina had an open admission policy and accepted everybody,: we would be in the same trouble as New York City University, which must be why Miss Rosenstock chose to pursue her education in another state. Hubert O. Hayworthl 2226 Granville S. HERE IS MY KIND OF RACE!' teaching of students at UNC, for example which I think Professor Casado should be granted space to pursue. Third, I am puzzled by the whole paragraph which begins: "The policy of 'publish or perish' is not without flaws." The main such flaw, apparently, is that it encourages publication for the sake of promotion rather than from a commendable desire to share really major new findings publication designed only to build up one's own or the university's "academic credentials" and make one "recognized," if not nationally at any rate locally where promotion decisions are made. My question is whether such "flaws" can or should be corrected. And if so, how. The problem is raised but almost instantly dropped in the present essay. And second, whether Professor Casado thinks that non-publication is or ought to be a legitimate or commendable professional option. If trivial publication publication for promotion is a vice, it is nonetheless better than none at all? From the closing words of his essay, I gather that Professor Casado does find that at UNC there is anyway "no other recourse" than to publish even publish trivia lest one be rusticated to Podunk or worse, East Carolina. Should this continue at UNC? Must it? Is it inevitable? Is it desirable? Should we be proud of it? Finally, I would seek clarification whether Professor Casado wants to congratulate UNC, or on the contrary to attack it, for the publications of its faculty. Publishing, he tells us, being' "the most visible form of success" pleases administrators and occasions in interstate THE CANNIBALS Brainwashed? To the editor: Pat Crockett's letter (DTH Nov. 18) claims that he is being "brainwashed" (albeit unconsciously) into accepting the validity of Zionism. His call for a "rational consideration" of the United Nation's anti Zionism stand belies the irrational nature of the U. N. vote. "It is well known that deepest feelings of a large part of the Jewish people are connected with Palestine... It will be unjust if we ignore this aspiration and deny the Jewish people of the right to realize it." Was the above spoken by a "brainwashed" American? No the preceding was quoted from then Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in his speech defending Zionism before the U. N. in 1947! Yet in spite of this and other historical and political facts, Crockett would maintain that there is no connection between being anti-Zionist and being anti-Jewish. Crockett would have us believe that the Arab refugee problem is largely Israel's fault and responsibility. He fails to mention extensive documentation attesting to (1) the flight of the Arab populace caused in part by the early departure of community leaders to neighboring countries, (2) the plea by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem for Arabs to leave so that the annihilation of the Jews would be made easier, and (3) the many assurances of personal safety that Jewish leaders made to the Arab populous before and during the 1948 war (the London Times has an absorbing account of these events as they : ' mm students and faculty alike pride in those "academic credentials" which make UNC "nationally recognized." We are all proud for reasons like these not to be at Podunk, or ECU. But Professor Casado at the same time undermines this confidence. At UNC there does seem to be possibly rather a lot of merely promotion-oriented publication, just as there certainly is a lot of publication oriented promotion. Our shiny "credentials," that is, rest at least in part upon "a product of little or no value" produced for reasons no better than that persons want to keep or advance in their jobs. This is at least disturbing in itself. Still more, it would also appear from Professor Casado's remarks that since publications "guarantee" tenure and promotion, permanent access to UNC students in the role of teacher is not in fact conditioned upon successful teaching but upon the copious or successful production or publications publications which themselves, by Professor Casado's own argument, may very well have been produced for base or irrelevant motives of personal self aggrandizement rather than scholarly merit. This too is an odd state of affairs in a university which claims to deserve praise and to merit its situation of being "nationally recognized." Is Professor Casado being ironic about our supposed eminence or distinction? I would be grateful, therefore, if you could grant Professor Casado the space to pursue and clarify his actual argument. What his essay of 12 N ovember mostly does for me is spin my head. Roger G. Swearnigen is an assistant professor of English. education occurred in Haifa). It is interesting to note that those nations in favor of the U.N. resolution operate under communist andor totalitarian regimes where there is little, if any, semblance of political freedom or morality. One should question the righteous indignation expressed by such "free" and "enlightened" nations as Uganda, Pakistan, Nigeria, East Germany, Syria, Chile or Russia. Indeed it is ironic that although rated as free by Freedom House with almost perfect scores in political rights and civil rights, Israel is accused of repressive practices by those nations whose own internal conditions are infinitely more repressive. If ever there was an anti-racist, anti colonialist movement, it was and still is Zionism, which strives merely to provide for the Jewish people the same rights of self determination as all people deserve and enjoy. A small nation under considerable economic and security pressure should not be expected to act with the same largesse like a superpower such as the United States. But to infer that a situation largely caused by other parties's active intervention and their subsequent neglect of the ensuing refugee problem is cause to accuse Israel of racism is misguided if not an indication of ignorance. I would encourage Mr. Crockett to answer those questions he raised in his letter. He should, however, look into the context of the particular situation and not be swayed by simplistic slogans often uttered by those who have ulterior (if not antithetical) motives to propound. Paul Kade 28 Craige Isaiah Quincy Glibness, pedantry, blindness These are the times when I must shake my shaggy head and marvel at the glibness and the pedantry of my fellows, w ho often speak and write about matters in which they have little knowledge or great blindness. In their ' mastery of language, these wits and soon-to-be scholars have grown cautious about revisions in the language, just as revisions in the sharing of power make cautious those who possess power. The nature of change is feared as much as the peculiarities of any particular change. And so when this newspaper proposes that words with needless gender be stripped of their gender, glib wielders of the pen and stalwarts of the literati cry "Nay, nay!" while the erudite, with little else to do, scour pages of newsprint in search of logical inconsistencies, illogical consistencies and error. All this in an effort to deprive the English language of words like "chairperson," "spokesperson," and "bondsperson," words which are the natural evolution of our language. Bruce Tindall, who, I am told, also signs himself "the Mad Pedant," has displayed both his madness and his pedantry quite aptly in a letter to the editor entitled "Neuter persons," Friday, Nov. 14. Mr. Tindall tells us that the suffix "man" as used in "chairman," etc., "does not come from the same place as the male noun 'man" but has "the same root as the German word 'mensch' when means 'person.' "Therefore a 'chairman' means exactly the same as 'chairperson' so why change it?" he concludes. Mr. John Russell, a former associate and dear acquaintance of mine, alluded to the same "spirit of the German word mensch" on this very page only Wednesday. Unfortunately, Mr. Tindall and Mr. Russell are quite in error on the etymology of "man" as noun and suffix. In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (known to the literati as the OED), the suffix "man" derives not from "man" as a generic term but from "man" as "an adult male person." The OED cites a long list of examples, as it is wont to do, including "bondsman," "postman" and "salesman." But even if the suffix derived from the generic sense of "man" or even if, through some reverse etymological process, it has attained a generic meaning, the English language is still deficient in that it does not provide distinct words for man as a male adult and man as a biological and symbolic entity. The etymology (and spirit) of the word "mensch" underscores this deficiency. "In all the Teutonic languages, the word (man) had the twofold sense of 'human being' and 'adult male human being,'" the OED explains, "though except in English it has been mainly superceded in the former sense by a derivative" (emphasis added). In Swedish that derivative is "menniska." In Danish it is "meneske." And in Dutch and German, the derivative is, of course, the much-heralded "mensch." So instead of supporting the generic sense of the suffix "man," "mensch" emphasizes the failure of the English language to provide a derivative which lessens the burden placed on a word bypassed in the evolution of the modern tongue and increasingly offensive to the modern sensibility. On both linguistic and "sociological" grounds, a change in the use of the masculine suffix is wan&ited. But what kind of change is in order? A simple criterion, set forth in an editorial in this newspaper on Thursday, Nov. 13, provides the key. Where "gender is a necessary descriptive element," it ought to be incorporated in the word chosen for a particular context. Thus, when one wants to evoke images of maternal regality, one would select "queen" over "monarch." Where gender is not a necessary descriptive element, it ought not to be imposed by an arbitrary adherence to an anachronism. If those against "spokesperson" disdain the rhythm of the word, let them find a happy substitute w hich ends the archaic dominance of the masculine form. This is not Newspeak. Rather it is a revision of the language for the purpose of precision, not for the purpose of standardization. By making the language more precise, we make it more communicative and more evocative in the proper combinations of words and their nuances. Thus when we speak of "man," we shall evoke the images of masculinity. When'we speak of "woman," we shall evoke the images of femininity. And when we speak of "personhood" or "humanity," we shall evoke the images of that "peculiar creature w ho is neither angel nor beast, but both." In this fashion we shall strengthen the language, acknowledge the evolution of sex roles and mean what we say while saying what we mean. To that end, language reform, whether in newspapers, in bubble gum wrappers or in secret convocations clustered in darkest Durham, is a worthy pursuit. Isaiah Quincy is the occasional pseudonym of Cole C. Campbell, editor and a graduate student in speech from Winston-Salem. Unsigned or initialed columns on this . page represent the opinion of the Daily Far Heel. Signed columns represent the opinion of the individual contributor ;only. The Daily Tar Heel welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be typed, double spaced, on a 60-space line and are subject to condensation or editing for libelous content or bad taste.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Nov. 19, 1975, edition 1
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