KANSAN COMMENT
Photo by John Brown
"It's A Grand Old Rag"
Others on issues-
This column is made available periodically for campus leaders to discus current issues.
Ed. note—diZerega is a former student senator, active in campus politics. The opinions in this column are diZerega's and not necessarily those of the Kansan staff.
By GUS diZEREGA
The Strike of April 8 has exposed the bankruptcy of traditional campus leadership, especially that of the dynamic duo of Peter George and Rick von Ende. Last year in a column I pointed out that self-styled "moderate" student leaders had never initiated anything of importance at the University. Events which occurred during the strike prompt me to say that the leading "moderate" leaders increased the potential violence and actual misunderstandings of the strike and that the campus would have been better off if they had done nothing.
On April 7 the majority of Student SenEx members published a leaflet written by Peter George attempting to stop the strike. Since the four who signed it, Peter George, Rick von Ende, Bill Ebert, and Phil Weiss, control the most powerful student government organization it is revealing to examine its arguments.
The Student SenEx paper argued that the reasons behind the Strike were either an attempt to secure Velvel's and Litto's promotion or a desire for publicity and notoriety on the part of the Strike's organizers. Since Velvel and Litto were sure of promotion there was obviously no honorable reason to strike.
George, von Ende, Ebert, and Weiss were apparently unable to understand the Strike Committee's simple English when it said that the issue was academic freedom. The Committee continued that the precedent set by Regents Bubb and Wunsch of using political criteria to decide upon promotion were particularly dangerous, especially in conjunction with Shultz's opportunistic attacks upon university autonomy. To let the interference ride because the professors would probably be promoted anyway was to give tacit approval to the correctness of these
Regents' interference. "Political interference, or EVEN THE THREAT of it can cast a pall over a campus."
Presumably having no quarrel with the Regents on this score, our "leaders" refused even to consider academic freedom an issue.
While these men speak of making the system work, they not surprisingly neglect to point out that they control the system if any students do. They comprise its heart. If it hasn't worked it is because they have done nothing effective to real with the issues. Indeed, it seems as if they weren't even interested in the issue until real campus leadership threatened to displace them. None of these people bothered to go to the Thursday meeting that planned the Strike. Nor did they attend any subsequent meetings. Most were not even in evidence on campus Wednesday—usually to be found lounging around the Senate office, they were nowhere to be seen. (An encouraging exception here was Ebert.) Knowing nothing about the Strike they presumed to tell us everything—and consequently spread fear and dissension.
The sad truth is that none of these "leaders" understand the students they are supposed to represent. They fear the student body, always worrying that we might repudiate their nonexistent leadership. Seeing themselves as honest brokers between the barbarism of the students and the civilization of the administration, they naturally fear any spontaneous student activity.
Our "moderate" student leadership consists of little George Romneys in flair pants. Their Politics of Predictability is as out of style as Calvin Coolidge. For the sake of the university these people should be defeated if they attempt to set themselves up as leaders next year (except, maybe for Ebert for whom there is a smidgen of hope—he's not as set in his ways)—their political place is the garbage cans of history—may they rest quietly.
Griff & the Unicorn
BY SOKOLOFF
$ \textcircled{2} $David Sokoloff 1970
hearing voices—
To the editor:
It has become apparent from my classes that at least one underlying premise of any requirement is fallacious. It is assumed that foreign language requirements can and do provide a minimum proficiency in the language required. However, neither effective nor minimum learning can be required. As much as we might try, neither motivation to learn nor the assimilation of academic material can be forced on an unwilling student. In the final analysis, the only things that can be required are things like, attendance, participation in the bankrupt but omnipresent grade game, and blind tribute to the wisdom of the Educational Policies Committee—none of which are particularly valuable commodities.
With the current review of graduation requirements of the College (Math 25, English I, II, III, Speech I, Western Civilization, and foreign language), I feel obliged to offer my opinions to the dialogue. As an assistant instructor of a required foreign language course, I believe I have gained some insights that may be beneficial to the discussion, and it is my hope that some of my observations can serve as the basis for a rational and meaningful reform. I believe the foreign language requirement should be abandoned.
It should be obvious that it is impossible to have an effective learning situation when the students are motivated by nothing more than obtaining high grades or at least avoiding low grades. Worse, now through pass/no credit options it is possible to remove the liability of low grades, which has the direct result of promoting mediocrity. Indeed, in order that students get any benefits from a course, they must be motivated to learn the material. It is futile to expect them to learn material in which they perceive (rightly or wrongly) no relevance. But even accepting the dubious proposition that an acceptable level of learning can be required in the first place, it is senseless to assume that the student's unwanted knowledge will be retained, thereby allowing its useful application.
Another unhappy aspect of language requirements peculiar to Kansas University is that the effectiveness of achieving minimum proficiency (or whatever the specific function that prompted their initiation) is simply assumed. Given the above arguments, such a proposition of assumed effectiveness is highly vulnerable. Why should sixteen hours of perfunctory completion of a foreign language course assure minimum proficiency? Is an inept public speaker any better after making a few oral presentations to his uninterested classmates in Speech I? Do English I, II, and III actually provide written communication skills, or are those skills a natural concomitant of an intellectually centered environment? Except for Western Civilization, we have a system re-enforced by self-fulfilling prophesies with no proof whatsoever that any requirement is actually effective in achieving the desired learning experience. As a student and instructor, I would estimate that no more than $25\%$ of those with 16 hours of Spanish could pass the language proficiency test immediately after finishing the courses, and that percentage would drop drastically if we waited until the final semester of the senior year in order to ascertain how many could actually use (or have retained) the knowledge.
Involuntary (required) education is an anachronism whose demise would tremendously vitalize the Liberal Arts and Sciences program. I have proposed to the Educational Policies Committee a viable alternative which would include minimum distributional requirements calling for 16 hours from each of the Humanities, Sciences, and Social Science areas with 8 hours of foreign language study counting toward partial fulfillment of the humanities distribution. The 8 hours credit for foreign language is in order not to penalize or unfairly discourage anyone studying a foreign language, which, I might add for the benefit of my myopic undergraduate colleagues, can be overwhelmingly relevant. I further agree that students should be able to demonstrate a minimum proficiency in written English communication, but it should be left to the individual student to determine the mode of acquiring minimum skills, if indeed they do not possess them already.
The present requirements are a snare and a delusion. The foreign language requirement is ill-conceived and counter-productive, but no more so than any other undergraduate requirement. I hope other faculty members will evaluate requirements in terms of their own classes and admit that other requirements fall miserably short of the desired goals. What could be worse for a faculty member than a class of 25 uninterested students, half of which are on the pass/no credit option, forced into class against their will? Senior faculty must already know because they have delegated such classroom situations (usually in required courses) to the assistant instructors.
William Miller
William Miller Overland Park, assistant instructor
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