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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 28, 1972)
"i .... ..... MMWMtrfiwwitiiiii-tilimniTiiviwwiiwtwi Alt . r7"Xsa'r r' ' . . monday, february 28, 1 972 ilincoln, nebraska vol. 95, no. 76 CO r Zumberge modifies visitation policy A mass violation of current RHA visitation policy scheduled for Monday night has been cancelled, according to Roger Story, RHA president. Story said Sunday the cancellation is a result of modifications made in the present visitation policy by UNL Chancellor James H. Zumberge. At a Friday press conference RHA said 80 per cent of all dormitory residents were expected to participate Monday night. Zumberge said Sunday he is using the authority of his office to liberalize the present policy. The changes will become official pending the Board of Regents' approval at their next meeting, March 11. The modifications include authorizing residence .hall officers to sponsor visitation hours. Such hours could previously only be sponsored by faculty, staff or parents. Although the intent of RHA hours remains the same, he said, the type of hours allowed "will be interpreted without any preconceived idea of what percentage of RHA hours must be devoted to social or educational activity." The changes do not include allowing residents to dose their doors if they have a visitor of the opposite sex. Neither do they allow a floor to et up visitation hours by one vote. The Magrath proposal would have implemented both these changes. Zumberge said the compromise resulted from negotiations which began Wednesday with RHA and ASUN officials and staff members from the office of Student Affairs. The proposal was finalized Saturday. Zumberge said he r . - - t - t "T I.' 1 , V f Csfore things came to a screeching halt . . student government housing officials discussed mass violations of housing policy. and then conferred with members of the Board of Regents by telephone. The chancellor emphasized the changes are only temporary measures and will have to be finalized by the board at an open meeting. He said the compromise is "reasonable. We had to recognize what the alternatives are." Steve Fowler, ASUN president, said the agreement was reached to avoid confrontation Monday night. "I hope this compromise will set a precedent for future changes in visitation policy ," he said. These types of changes should be made without expensive and time-consuming parental surveys." Said Fowler: 'The Board of Regents should not concern itself with so much trivia. There are more important things to do within the University." He said he hopes modifications will continue to be made "as students reach toward the goal of self- determination." Story said the compromise meets the needs of the University, the students and the Board of Regents. "Zumberge and the regents have acted in good faith toward the students," he said. Both Fowler and Story praised Zumberge's action. Fowler called the compromise a wise move and said the chancellor "made a good effort to find out student opinion." Story said Zumberge had been sympathetic. "He tried to find out student ooinion and to see things from all sides." Planned excellence By M. J. Wilson Cribbing has long been one of the minor problems of academic life. But lately the practice of turning in someone else's work as your own has assumed major proportions on campuses across America. In fact, cribbing has become a business and, at its present rate of growth, could soon become a big business. Organizations specializing in the s ale of custom-made term papers have begun to operate openly. They advertise in campus newspapers and on the radio. Their hard-sen leaflets are distributed in dormitories, student unions, even in classroom buildings. "If your holidays are going to be another academic nightmare spent working -or worrying about not working bring your deadlines to us," said hundreds of pink-and-yellow fliers put out just before Christmas vacation by Creative Communications Consultants, which operates on the Urbana campus of the University of I llinois. In New York, an outfit called Termpapers, Inc., has been doing business so widely and so blatantly that the state attorney general's office has brought suit to put it out of business. And Planned Paperhood. the largest term paper mill in Berkeley. Calif., has been threatened with legal action by Norman Epstein, counsel of the California State College Board of Regents. . m This has become a substantial business-a major attar, says Epstein. "But the difficulty in bringing legal action is that Vs? J . -I ft n it's a sort of consumptive offense. Neither party is about to blow the whistle." Indeed, the students who buy the papers for about $3.50 per page-seem as happy with the arrangement as the people who sell them. "Even if I write a paper myself," says a University of Maryland coed, "the professor isn't going to read it. How can he? He's got about 300 people writing papers for him. He'll just farm it out to some graduate student." The entrepreneurs seem even less morally torn than their customers. For one thing, they are mostly graduate students themselves and are bitter at the current difficulty in finding jobs in their specialties. They are also masters at the art of self-justification. "There is absolutely nothing illegal about this service," says Edward J. Whalen, 29, who until recently taught rhetoric and writing at the University of Illinois while working on his graduate, degree. "It's not sneaky plagiarism that we do. It's a matter of collecting data and providing eloquent prose." In Denver, a firm called Research and Educational Associates, Ltd, has five full-time employees and some 20 free-lance writers. Its founder, Charles Johnson, maintains that what he is doing is no different from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Service where research papers are done on specific subjects. The current boom in the term paper business began in Boston in late 1970 and soon spread around the country. Many of those involved are in communication with one another and exchange papers though all are quick to say that they do not sell the same paper to two students in the same rea. Usually the individual transaction begins when the student telephones the company, is quoted a price and then goes to the office to fill out an information sheet on his project. He also puts down a deposit. The paper is assigned to one of the firm's writers and is ordinarily promised for the following week or 10 days. But the entrepreneurs themselves may have the clearest view of the cribbing business. "There's a good reason why we're doing so well," says Eric Nisenson, co-manager of the San Francisco outlet of Termpapers Unlimited, a Boston-based outfit which claims it will net $1 million this year. "Education is a joke these days and most students are aware of it," he argues. "But the schools are turning their backs on the problems. When they wake up, we'll go out of business." NwnwMk r-attur Srvk
