Newspapers / Salem College Student Newspaper / Nov. 1, 1988, edition 1 / Page 7
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News The Infamous Answer! by Sarah Mahoney The infamous question as to how our tuition is distributed was posed to Tom Macon, Chief Business Officer, last Thursday. The answer was almost as infamous: the information can not'be disclosed. It is not because the Administration does not want us to have access to this information. It is primarily because the budget is "very complex and can [lead] to the wrong conclusions," without an extended explanation. Mr. Macon was able to help clarify some general questions as to how the funds are allocated. He first made the point of saying that there is no way of singling out what proportion of our tuition goes into each department. There are several sources of income that figure into the budget. Residential and Day Student tuitions make up for 61%. Endowments rank secondly, 13%. Interestingly, the Adult Degree Program compiles only seven percent. Sales, interest, private gifts and grants, combined, speak for the remaining 19%. For the academic year of 1987-88, Salem’s revenue totaled $8,012,768. This money is allocated into eight major areas. Instruction consumes 36% of the budget, and this was the division Mr. Macon used to help explain how the internal monies are distributed. The Instruction division includes every educational department on campus. Salaries incur the largest expense. This includes the professors’ take home pay and fringe benefits such as retirement programs and insurance policies. Fifty-nine percent of the master budget is used to pay the faculty, administration, and st^f. After salaries are taken out of the Instruction budget, the money remaining goes toward travel expenses, supplies, equipment purchases and duplicating costs. Sometimes additional funds are supplied by seperate grants such as the Pew Grant, which aids the science department. Mr. Macon was also able to offer some insight as to how the administration decides departmental allowances. Dr. Litzenberg gives each of the Deans budget limits, and it is up to them to submit a suitable budget for approval. Happily, last year’s budget allowed for a four percent increase in the Instruction department. It is the hope of Mr. Macon that these facts answer some of the questions the student body has about the College’s budget. Page 7 Giving Salem Credit by Beth Barksdale Though it has been nearly four years since I have examined a college application, I distinctly remember the weeding process and the importance of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools stamp of approval. In my search to attend an institute of higher education, I relied heavily on this accreditation to distinguish those places I might wish to enroll. However, it was not until recently that I understood the involved processes that enable a college to receive such a stigma. Presently, Salem is preparing for reaffirmation. Though a visiting committee from SACS will not frequent the campus until February of 1990, the procedures involved are laborious. Thus in order to demonstrate her achievement of certain results from institutional planning and evaluation efforts as required by the "Criteria for Accreditation," Salem has begun her course. Eight committees ranging form Institutional Effectiveness to Financial Resources, have been appointed for self study and will produce various reports of their planning and evaluation processes for reviews. A faculty member presides as the liason of each committee with various students and staff acting as constituents. The purpose of each is to provide the achievement of congruous goals, to provide feedback for program improvement, and to assure appropriate student achievement for the academic credentials awarded. Accreditation has evolved from a primary emphasis on process and resourses to increased concentration on results and learning outcomes. These committees are indirectly responsible for assessing, maintaining, and improving the quality of higher education. SACS believes that it is proper and educationally sound to require that an accredited institution state its goals, develop methods by which the attainment of these goals can be evaluated, and finally demonstrate that the information received is utilized. Thus, Salem must be prepared to defend all aspects of her foundation, such as institutional and educational, physical, and financial development. Though the actual reaffirmation is over a year away, Salem College is already committed to professional education. Obvious in her fundamental understanding of transcendent knowledge, the quality of learning is manifested in her name. Only the technicalities remain. Honor and Office: One Student's Protest by Colman McCarthy Someone at Georgetown University taught Mark Johnson well. Maybe too well. The senior from Somerville, N.J., and president of the student body took a defiant stand for conscience the other day. He broke away from the academic herd by refusing to attend in an official capacity the awarding of an honorary degree to Ronald Reagan. President Reagan came to the Georgetown campus as part of the Jesuit school’s bicentennial celebration. Among the convocating elders, including a cardinal of the church, Reagan gave a speech. He received a doctorate in humane letters "in honor of his work for freedom and peace" and was reverentially attended by the two Jesuit priests who are Georgetown’s president and provost. Johnson, as the top student leader, could have been onstage with the mighties of church and state. A photo would have been snapped and who, back in the dorms, would not be wowed by a shot of the Gipper next to our boy Mark. I pass, said Johnson, gagging at the idea of honoring Reagan. Five days before, he wrote to the university provost that the spectacle would be a betrayal of the school’s ideals: Reagan’s "policies, as they relate to higher education, have shown little concern for the financial hardships endured by thousands of college-aged students...Even more troubling than his eduacation policies, Ronald Reagan has shown no commitment to the poor, the disadvantaged and the homeless of our nation. He has created and presided over a national atmosphere of materialism in which people could confidently state, ’Greed is good.’ Georgetown has and must continue to combat this growing trend of selfishness in our country." Johnson, a government major with a minor in theology, won few students or faculty to his protest. In the issue after Reagan’s appearance, the campus newspaper ran three letters on Johnson. All berated him: for being "disrespectful," for "attempting to embarrass" Georgetown and for his great "disservice" to the students. Then there is the go-along set. The paper reported that "although some university faculty strongly disagreed with giving Reagan a degree, they attended the ceremony to celebrate Georgetown’s bicentennial year." Why no faculty walkout? Why no organized picket line? Why no names on a petition? Is dissent at Georgetown so tepid that only one student-plus a few writers on the alternative newspaper-could remain upright while the university bowed and scraped in official prostration to a politician who devoted eight years to assaulting what the school presumably believes in? An argument advanced by faculty sophists is that the office, not the man, was being honored. That has a certain Catholic fashionability to it, last seen when the pope embraced Kurt Waldheim as a "head of state." He, too, was the office, not the man. In Reagan’s case, Mark Johnson saw what many of the learned minds at Georgetown could not: If the office is abused or cheapened by the person in it, let’s not honor either. A failing common to university presidents is importing to campuses the powerful and rich, without much questioning how the power and wealth was acquired or is being used. Sometimes it falls to an unbcdazzled Mark Johnson to remind ivy-wall eminences of their power-game excesses. "At Georgetown," he said, "we challenge ourselves to go out into the world and right the very problems and injustices that the Reagan administration has perpetuated." Even if Johnson were not president of the student body, he would command attention for another reason. He has thrown himself into education as only a few students do. In addition to taking six courses this semester, he volunteers at a soup kitchen. Every week, he signs over to the university his paycheck for 20 hours of work in the campus caferteria. After graduation, he plans to spend a year in the slums of Lima, Peru, as a volunteer social worker. Johnson believes he gets his resolve from his mother- a night-shift emergency-room nurse and a single parent. One of his favorite theology courses this semester is "Jesus Christ in 20th Century Thought." Its Jesuit professor, who supported Johnson’s protest, speaks warmly of his student and his "strong capacity for critical inquiry." Johnson knows how to inquire all right, starting with questions to those on his campus who know much but who don’t always know better. Reprinted by permission of The Washington Post. Writers Syndicate
Salem College Student Newspaper
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Nov. 1, 1988, edition 1
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