Newspapers / Gaston College Student Newspaper / June 12, 1972, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page 2 The Gas Light June 12, 1972 Student Evaluation Plan IsDefended ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ By Parks Cruse evaluation was that because the colusion by absence on the othei How To Select A College’s Top Scholar Or Pick A Perfect Student-Any Perfect Student Want to match wits, critical judgment, and unerring acumen with that of some of Gaston's top brass? Here’s a simple test of your ability to weigh evidence logically and mete out justice The rules are simple: all you do is examine three student records and then determine which of the three is Gaston’s top student. Sound simple? It IS simple. No worrying with athletic ability, student activities, politics, or race, creed, or color. Student A in two years took 24 courses here, earned 22 A’s and 2 B’s, and finished with a quality point average of 3.919 of a total possible score of 4.000. Student B took eighteen courses in two years, earned 15 A’s and 3 B’S and concluded with a quality point average of 3.897. Student C. took 29 courses, made 19 A’s, 2 B’s, 5 C’s, 2 D’S, and withdrew from one course while building a two-year quality point average of 3.500. Student A had a total of 112 hours; Student B had 97; and Student C had 107. Now make your choice. Correct answers will be given below. Ready to check? If you picked Student A as the best in Gaston College, you aredeadwrong! Batting a complete zero! If you selected either Student B or Student C, you are much better, batting a hefty .500. If, however, you selected Students B and C in a two-way tie for top honors, you are batting 1.000. A perfect choice! Not only that, both B and C are sporting perfect straight A averages! Confused? You don’t understand how two students can make straight A’s when one earned three B’s and the other picked up two B’s, five C’s, and two D’s? Welcome to the club! Look back at the evidence. Student B attempted ten courses here at Gaston and earned a total of forty-seven quarter hours. Student C took eighteen courses at Gaston for a total of seventy-nine quarter hours. Student A took twenty-four courses here and picked up a total of one hundred and twelve quarter hours of credit Now for the solution. It seems that the ruling was made on the basis of work attempted only here at the college. In other words, it is possible for a student to study at another school and pull straight D’s and then transfer to Gaston and go to work long enough to pull a few A’s and subsequently graduate with a straight A average. Here is the gripe of THE GAS LIGHT. The top scholastic honor is to be given, according to all the information available, to the top student in the graduating class. In this light. Student B, with only 47 hours, cannot graduate. Neither can Student C, with 79 hours. Only Student A is a bona fide graduate. From another point of view, let’s assume that a student came here and took only one course. Go even further. A basketball player decides to take a physical education course - one course - and makes an A. Does he become Gaston’s top student? Apparently so. J^rom this logical viewpoint we can go in any number of directions. Fox example, the major leagues might adopt this pattern and award the pennant to the team that won its last ten games, after being in the cellar for nine-tenths of the season. A president could be evaluated on the basis of what he did during the last week of his term in office. In fact, a student could demand to be graded on the basis of how well he answered the final question on a quiz. THE GAS LIGHT does not intend to cast any aspersion upon the work of the students in question. Their records speak for themselves. But this newspaper indeed wishes to call attention to what seems to be a grave miscarriage of academic justice, and we wish to make suggestions for the avoidance of similar goofs in the future. For one thing, some understanding must be reached on a minimum number of hours a student must take at this institution in order to qualify for such honors as the one in question. Second, if a student counts work at another institution toward graduation, then it seems only logical that this work must be counted in the grade-point average. Third, why not count the total number of quality points earned during a student’s stay here at Gaston, with the maximum number being determined by the minimum required hours for graduation? In other words, base the honors award on a total of ninety-six hours and give the honor to the student with the highest number of quality points. If we don’t take another viewpoint, we will add only more injustices to the one considered here. We have no statistical evidence at our fingertips, but it is highly possible that there are twenty students here with a grade of A in eighteen courses. If not, then what about straight A’s in ten courses, which is what Student B had? We do not feel qualified to tell anyone how to run his job, but we do feel that we are entitled to express our views on how such decisions as the one in question are made. After all, why penalize a student simply because he elected to spend his first two college years here at Gaston. It may be a small gripe in view of all that’s wrong with the world. But when a student with twenty-four A’s and two B’s and a quality point average of 3.919 receives no recognition, something is wrong. Especially when the winners have nineteen A’s in thirty courses in one case and seventeen A’s in twenty courses in the other instance. It’s hard to come in first and finish third. A Home For The Wandering Jew: An Appreciation area but in the state. While other college editors were exercising their new-found obscenities and making efforts to undermine college administrations. Miss Schauer made every issue of THE By Parks Cruse Several months ago a committee was formed, at the request of the Gaston College administration, to formulate an instrument and application for an evaluation of faculty members by the students. When this committee began on their assigned tasks, the primary concern of the members, students and faculty, was to keep all phases of the evaluation from becoming an unjust incrimination or accusation but rather a useful, meaningful tool to be used by the administration and the faculty itself for the betterment of the college community. The possibility of such an evaluation becoming a raging lion hungry for Christians was, from the beginning, recognized by the committee. In this respect, and with respect, the committee spent many hours systematically pulling the teeth of the evaluation instrument and subsequently gave the instructor a chair and pistol to protect himself from being gummed by the toothless demon. No one on the committee was fooled into believing that the results of the committee would be acceptable to everyone involved. Some students would want questions honed for carving while some would feel that their entire profession was being maligned. Neither of these two extremities could be catered to and have the evaluation retain any validity. Therefore, the committee strove for a system of equality and they devised what they considered a mild, just, and defensible process of evaluation and usage but one that would be definitely subject to modification by the student government and the faculty senate when deemed necessary. To the bewilderment of the committee members, the instrument and the recommendations for usage came under considerable attack, but it seems that the resistance to it stems mainly from a misunderstanding of intent or lack of information on content. One argument against the evaluation was that because the instrument was to be left unsigned, the constitutional guarantee of facing one s accusor is denied to the instructor. This is not a realistic argument because the instrument has been devised so that it cannot be used as an accusation, and the recourse provided to the instructor to review and present his arguments against what he believes to be an unjust evaluation further restricts the danger of being maligned or even accused. The question of dismissal of an instructor on the basis of evaluations (note please the plural form) has also been posed as an objection to the usage of the student evaluation. To the careful reader the recommendation states that the instructor who receives low evaluations from both his department head and the student ev^uation for three consecutive years should be dismissed. An instructor who cannot realize that he may be deficient and rectify his deficiency in three years has no place on a college campus and should resign even if to only retain a portion of his or her dignity. A few examples of the measures that were taken to protect the instructors from the abuse or misuse of an evaluation may be evidence to the attitude and sincerity of the committee and the responsibility it felt in this important undertaking. To eliminate the possiblity of suasion in the department-head evaluation, the student evaluation was to be made after that of the department head. To insure the instructor’s rights, the opportunity to review the evaluations and make comments on the outcome of the evaluation was recommended. Confidence that the instructor’s comments would be justly weighed by the department heads and administration was the key to this recommendation. The provision for instructors leaving their regular classroom was made to eliminate the remote possibilities of intimidation by presence on one hand and colusion by absence on the other. This too was done for the instructor’s benefit in that under either circumstance the evaluation would lose its validity and thus its worth. What qualifies the student to pass judgment on his instructor? This question has also been asked and the answer is nothing qualifies a student to “pass judgment” on instructors. The evaluation is not an effort to have “judgment” but a worthwhile view of an instructor from the eyes of his students. The committee, and more specifically the student members of the committee, made a concerted effort to eliminate from the instrument the questions concerning professionalism, academic qualifications, and many other facets of instructors that the committee felt the student was not competent to evaluate. The section on the instrument which was proveded for remarks by the student was included soley for the benefit of the instructor. The remarks by the students could provide valuable insight for the instructor and also could be evidence to substantiate or repudiate an evaluation, good or bad. In another recommendation the wording in the rough draft stated that the student evaluation would be given 50 per cent of the weight in an instructor’s overall evaluation. Here again the students felt that this was unfair to the instructor in recognition that an individual human being cannot be evaluated or considered as a percentile figure or by mathematics alone. The resultant recommendation was phrased with the word equality, not meant in the strict algebraic or mathematic sense but in the sensible intelligent sense of application to a human being. I am sure that there still remain some unanswered, unresolved points of the evaluation, but these can be sensibly and calmly worked out in the future. The goal that was aimed for in this article was to bring out some facts and (Continued on Page 3) Letter To The Editor How To Lose Your Freedom In Ten ElasyLessons By Ralph Brown Recently the student center was the scene of another favorite past-time of conservative administrations and brain-washed ex-military sympathizers. The game, of course, is called “supression of freedom of speech.” The rules are simple: 1. The administration takes it upon itself to invite as “guests” of the College, several recruiters from the Marine Corps. The purpose of these recruiters is to distribute literature and advice to their hosts. This is fairly effective since the recruiters prey, generally, on those of us who are majoring in ‘Card-Playing 101’ and ‘Advanced Chit-Chat 204.’ 2. A small group of students One day a very short time ago a very timid girl (journalistically speaking) wandered into the office of THE GAS LIGHT. She had never worked on a paper and had been coerced gently into trying to write a story or two. On being given her first assignment, she disappeared, and everyone on the staff assumed that she had been frightened away. Twenty minutes later she was back, story in hand, and announced that she was ready for her next assignment. The girl was, of course, Irene Schauer. Within two months she had been named assistant editor for the college paper, which came out on a now-and-then basis. With her energies devoted to the paper, it soon became a regular pubhcation, and- in the spring quarter she had to step in on an emergency basis and assume the duties of the editor. That summer, for the first time, the college paper was published monthly, and the following year it was, in the estimation of those who worked closely with THE GAS LIGHT, by far the best paper Gaston had ever produced and onfe of the very best in this general area. Make that THE best. Not in the GAS LIGHT a positive statement. She looked for good and found it. When the bad appeared, she reported it accurately and objectively. When she left here a few days ago, she left as many friends among faculty, administration, and student body as had any other student in memory. She spent endless hours working to make the paper a better publication, and she succeeded. must then read the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution, where in they find that freedom of speech is not supposed to be abridged. By extenuation, this includes the freedom to speak out with an opposing viewpoint. 3. The small group must then make posters supporting their claims (paid for from their own funds — only the guests are allowed to use government tax funds). The group must then put their posters on the wall and sit very quietly and wait. 4. Then an ultra-conservative person (perferably an ex-Marine) must be induced to rush madly out of his lair and proceed to rip, snort, and tear down the offending posters. All this is done without benefit of permission, or without consideration of rights or property of others. 5. The small group must then face an irate administrator to answer charges of behavior tending to discourage our “guests” from their labor of love. 6. The small group must then be ‘‘invited” to the administrator’s lair and then be cajoled into agreeing not to trample on the feelings of those poor defenseless little ‘old Marines, and instead, to take the American way of pursuing its goal through legal channels. 7. Then, at considerable time and effort, the small group must succeed in getting a resolution passed in the S.G.A. stating their desire to peacefully advocate their views at the same time and in the same place as the Marines. 8. The S.G.A., composed of many “card-players” and “chit-chatters” and shepherded by the Administration, must then proceed to kill the proposal on several minute points of technicality. This prevents the rest of the “card-players” and “chit-chatters” from ever having any knowledge of the issue and of course kills any chance of ever getting it to a general student referendum. 9. The small group must then realize that their proposal was doomed from the start. Administration has too much to lose by allowing democratic dissent on this campus, and the card-players and chit-chatters stand to lose by being forced to think about an issue. And, of course, the Marines have their own time-honored methods of handling dissent from the Halls of Montezuma to the Halls of Gaston College. 10. The small group must then either: a) despair b) take to heart the words of Thomas Jefferson, “I have sworn eternal enmity against every form of tyranny over the minds of men” continue to struggle for freedom on this campus, legally or no.
Gaston College Student Newspaper
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
June 12, 1972, edition 1
2
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