editoria
Tenure quotas unjust Greeks a
1 1 AC"t" t
It always has been standard procedure to blame the Legislature
y for the university's problems with Wring and keeping good faculty
members. Salaries are pitifully low, and those faculty members
who misjudged the greeness of the university's pasture are quick to
find somewhere-else to do their scholastic grazing.
Now the NU Board of Regents, for reasons unspecified, has laid
itself open to a share of the blame.
At last Saturday's meeting, the board delayed action on NU
President D.B. Valuer's recommendations that tenure be granted to
154 UNL faculty members and 18 at the University of Nebraska
Medical Center. '
The board, it seems, is concerned about the percentage of
tenured faculty members, especially at UNL. The regents want to
put a ceiling on tenvre next year (UNL Chancellor James
Zumberge was directed to produce a plan limiting the number of
tenured teachers at UNL to 75 per cent of those eligible) and then
s lower that ceiling for the next several years.
The prospect is that some good faculty members and some
equally good prospects will watch the ceiling drop, cry "The sky is
falling!" and take off for lands where professors are still a
protected species.
A look at the tenure system and its tendency to bestow
protected status on an occasional imcompetent professor is
certainly justified, no matter how vehemently the American
Association of University Professors declares tenure to be "of
cardinal and central importance to higher education in
guaranteeing freedom of inquiry and discussion."
Faculty members are eligible for tenure after they have been
employed full time for seven years. Those with tenure cannot be
fired without cause. An estimated 73 per cent of UNL's eligible
faculty members now have tenure.
But while examining tenure is justified, telling 172 faculty
members that they won't be granted it because they don't fit in
under a quota plan is not.
Wes Albers
Editor's note: The following is the opinion of
Gerald Logan.
Wednesday evening, hundreds of Lincoln
motorists were baptized by water and the spirit
of mass lunacy. Yes, the fraternity boys and their
sorority cohorts once again substantiated the
theory that higher education doesn't necessarily
produce higher intelligence.
They gathered on 16th St., on fraternity row.
Buckets were filled with water; garden hoses
were stretched out to the curb. Any passing
vehicle became a primary target. There was no
discrimination. The young and resilient were
caught in the trap; so were the elderly, the
businessmen, mothers and children-anyone wo
assumed that unmolested passage on a Lincoln
public street was guaranteed by local ordinance.
Unfortunately, fraternity row is an area of dual
jurisdiction. The Lincoln police are in charge of
the street, and Campus police officers supposedly
maintain order on the adjacent property. By the
time both agencies coordinate their strategy to
curtail the disturbance, the damage is done, the
demented humor of the kiddie crowd is gratified.
Water play
Wednesday night, the Lincoln police did arrive
approximately an hour after the water play
began. Traffic was detoured at the intersection of
16 and Vine Streets. The frat boys were deprived
of their play toys. They were foiled this
time, .but they'll return to the curbs as they
always do year after year-driven by the insane
desire to make their mark upon the skulls of the
world, to let all of us in the working business
community know that another inconsiderate -generation
of fraternal mental midgets are
destined to appear in our personnel offices.
ire uraei
Wednesday, I received a water spray through
my open car window. . .a new twist to a long list
of frat boy assaults. For years, I've dodged water
balloons, pea-shooters, snowballs, frisbees and
footballs. (Four years ago, my wife received a
football directly in the side of the head as we
drove through campus.)
Unfortunately, as it is in most cases, someone
will have to die-student or motorist-before
punitive action is finally taken. When law
enforcement officials have to deal with an elusive
offender that escapes into the sanctuary of a
fraternity, into the company of a house of
fools. . .what can anyone do? Request severe
punishment for the whole frat? Close 16th St.?
Human consideration
Personally, I could ask for a little more human
consideration, for what it's worth. After all, that
unsuspecting recipient of a "harmless" assault
could be an elderly gentleman with a weak heart;
a bespetacled person who could lose control of
his car if he lost his glasses. . .the possibilities for
tragedy are many.
1
There is one solution that could be "fun" and
at the same time greatly benefit the entire
Uncoln community. And here it is, boys.
Control you titters and contain your drool for a
second and listen. Why not see how many other
fraternity houses you can burn to the ground
before the opposition finally gets yours? Now
doesn't that sound like fun? Try it.
n Z,
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I'D BETTER PROTECT
MYSELF BEFORE tiZ
60 OUFSIOE.
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YOU WOVLblOT MPPE'J
TO HME MY SUV TW
LOTWjUJDULD YOJ?
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TELL MB,
UOW DOES YOUR
WOT TASTE?
Student employment troubles begin in college
For a lot of us, May means only bare, tanned
maidens and brown, broad-shouldered boys, but for
those who are graduating May means "Where do I
get a job?"
Unfortunately, employment prospects are so bad
this year that many graduates may be still muttering
that question to themselves next year.
Part of the problem, of course, is the economy.
But it begins in college.
First, there is the ignorance of the student. The
student who cannot teli you the name of the chief of
state of Iraq also is uninformed about the
employment opportunities in his or her field.
This is compounded by the many advisers who fail
to let a student know just how bleak the sifuation is
within his or her major.
A shining exception is the English department,
where most advisers will paint you a picture so
desolate that, in comparison, Dante's trip thiough
hell looks like a vacation in Miami.
Many departments are not as frank, and the result
is masses of students moving lemming like from one
career to another.
For example, a year or so back everyone was going
into medicine. What many students were not told was
that in 1974 43,000 people applied for admission to
114 medical schools which had openings for 14,763.
There have also been mass migrations of students
into business and journalism.
Dean Joseph Pithler of the University of Kansas
reports that the business school growth has been 50
per cent higher than that of the rest of the university.
At the graduate level, enrollment is up 45 per cent.
U.S. News and World Report stated that
page 4
'Nationwide there has been a 15 ner cent rise in
applications to business schools."
Journalism is just as bad, with "some universities
reporting enrollment jumps of 20 per cent or more."
But, of course, the big thing this year is to go into
law. Indeed, it seems as if everyone is enrolling in law
school.
Now, regardless of what they tell you over at the
law school, the American Bar Association reports that
30,000 students will receive law degrees this year
while the Labor Department estimates openings for
16,500.
Worse yet is the news that law school applications
are increasing while the Labor Department reports
that they don't expect the need for lawyers to rise
bruce nelson
.9,
abovtf the 16,500 a year during the rest of this
decade.
In psychology in 1972, there were 44,000 degrees
awarded with the annual need amounting to only
4,300 positions.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that
"areas where supply is expected to exceed demand
include chemistry, food science, geology, history,
law, life science, meteorology, oceanography, physics'
political science and elementary and secondary
education."
Now all this may not result in higher
unemployment, but it most assuredly will result in a
lot of college graduates working in jobs for which
they didn't train and. maybe don't enjoy.
Cab drivers with B.A.S in history and bartenders
with Ph.Ds in philosophy are amusing to all except
tucniscivcs.
For these people, college will have been a series of
false promises and shattered illusions.
This is not, however, to call into question the
value of a liberal arts education. It is only to examine
the motivations and desires of students. If a student
wishes to pursue studies in an overcrowded and
impossible field than so be it; if he's forewarned and
willing to live with the consequences.
Why-don't-you-be-consistent-department:
-When a man robs a gas station and shoots an
attendant, liberals bend over backwards to stress that
he was a "product of his environment and caught in a
web of forces beyond his control."
Yet these same liberals start pulling their hair out
and foiget about rehabilitation when a Watergate
conspirator gets anything less than 20 years in prison.
Isn't it true, though, that II. R. Haldeman is just as
much a product of his environment as a black man
from the ghetto? If one cannot pull himself up by his
own bootstraps, then neither can the other.
-If you walk up to a feminist and say you frown
upon abortion, you will get a' speech on
a-wornan-has-a-right-to-her-own-body-elc. The same
feminist, however, will look askance at a Playboy
foldout even though Uie playmate is only exercising
the right so eloquently expressed earlier.
monday, april 21, 1975
daily nebraskan