Monday, September 8, ,1986
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Jeff Korbelik, EdiUtr, 4721766
James Rogers, Editorial Page EdiUtr
Gene Gentrup, Managing Editor
Tammy Kaup, Associate News Editor
Todd von Kampen, Editorial Page Assistant
NebraMcan
University ol Nebraska-Lincoln
tadente
Live instructors needed
UNL's College of Business
Administration faces a no
win situation and some 500
accounting students are finding
themselves the real losers in the
college's decision to use video
tapes as a teaching device in
stead of professors.
Students in two of the. six fall
Accounting 201 classes are being
taught with tapes made last
year. Thomas Hubbard, director
of the School of Accountancy,
said the change to video came
from necessity because of a
faculty shortage (Daily Nebras
kan, Septj 3). He said he would
much rather have live sections,
but told the Daily Nebraskari
that students would not be
shortchanged.
Two ASUN senators disagreed.
During the last senate meet
ing of the spring semester, Doug
Weems of the Arts and Sciences
College and Ed Miller of the
Graduate College introduced a
bill, saying that the use of video
taped instruction defies the pur
pose of higher education (D.N.,
Aug. 29).
In May, ASUN President Chris
Scudder vetoed the bill because,
she said, no one knew whether
the program would work during
(he summer.
Aptitude tests biased
Students' potential cannot be tested
Tests are obviously an inte
gral part of college life. Not
only do they form a signifi
cant part of a student's life while
at UNL, but the vast majority of
students needed to take "apti
tude" tests to get into the uni
versity. Similarly, for many stu
dents, aptitude tests (like the
LSAT, GRE and GMAT) are re-
quired for continued studies after
graduation.
An intriguing shift has occurr
ed over the past few years regard
ing the way the public, students
and academians view these "apti
fude" or "achievement" tests.
This shift should call forth policy
changes by post-secondary
schools.
Decades ago, aptitude tests
were considered objective mea
surements. Like IQ tests, these
tests were thought actually to
measure intelligence and poten
tial for education rather than
test "mere" knowledge.
As the years passed, these
claims of objectivity came under
increasing scientific scrutiny,
and substantial doubt about
these claims began to arise.
These doubts came to a head
especially during the '60s when
the "objective validity" of the
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
viewpoint underwent critical
scrutiny. (The WASP perspective
was claimed to underlie the con
struction of these exams.)
Yet in spite of the cultural and
socioeconomic bias of these tests
uncovered by critics, the tests
continued in popularity even
though the presuppositions which
called forth the tests in the first
place were largely discounted.
cheated.
Weems introduced a different
version of the bill, which failed
to get on the floor. He then
moved to override the veto, but
failed.
Robert Furgason, vice chan
cellor for academic affairs, spoke
against the bill. He said video
taped courses wouldn't be needed
if the Legislature had not cut
$3.8 million from the university
budget." He said that if the ad
ministration did not introduce
the videotaped classes, they
would have to raise the grade
point average requirements for
upper-level classes.
, . The way it stands now, every
time the university receives a
"setback in educating its stu
dents, the budget cuts are
blamed. The time has come to do
something to overcome the cuts
and not reduce the quality of
education.
'. videotaping classes is not a
step in that direction. Students
are paying for the real thing and
are finding themselves being
cheated.
A possible alternative: have
students pay more in tuition to
receive the education they de
serve. Until then, education at
UNL is beginning to diminish.
The rhetoric surrounding the
tests subsequently changed. The
tests began to be talked of as
"rites of passage" into adult
hood as if they were testing
sheer strength of character. As
journalist Michael Knisley re
cently observed in a Well Street
Journal editorial: "The real social
function of the SAT is as the
central affirmation ritual of
American meritocracy. It justi
fied the pecking order and re
minds people that they deserve
their place in it."
While measuring "objective in
telligence" may justify the use of
these exams, we certainly are
justified in doubting that testing
students' ability to do well on
aptitude tests (what else do they
really "test"?) is a basis suffi
cient to justify their continua
tion. Why, then, do universities con
tinue to require submission of
these test scores when scholarly
judgment seems so skeptical of
their validity? The answer
which is no real answer at all
is that the direction of institu
tional academic inertia are diffi
cult to slow and change.
If two indices of scholarly
potential (such as GPA and
recommendations) are not suffi
cient to make an informed admis
sions judgment, adding a test
score that is assigned in a biased
fashion is not helpful. Universi
ties should be concerned with
truth and accuracy; a fundamen
tal contradiction occurs if admis
sion into these institutions of
higher learning is based upon
indicators not demonstrative of
a student's desire and ability to
further these two aims.
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NCAA raling on Hiiskers 4not stupid'
UNL 's true colors scarlet and cream not
Last weekend wasn't a wash after
all, now, was it?
All the predictions of doom
that popped up in midweek didn't
come true. The NU flag over by the
Administration Building wasn't hauled
down to half-mast. The pep rally Friday
night didn't become a "pep wake."
And, by gum, our beloved Cornhuskers
took the field Saturday night with all
players eligible and won big.
Boy, were Helen Boosalis and the
rest relieved Thursday when the word
came that those 60 players accused of
violating the NCAA's game-pass rule
could play after all! Somehow, we man
aged to convince those wolves down in
Shawnee Mission, Kan., to give us a
chance to plead for mercy tomorrow.
But the most important thing about the
whole affair was that we'd have Steve
Taylor, "End Zone" Jones and the rest
and we wouldn't lose our undefeated
season and national title.
Wait a minute.
Most important?
It's well-known that "denial" is the
first stage people go through when they
learn something unsettling to them
selves. That something can be learning
you have cancer, your long-time boy
friend or girlfriend dumped you for
someone else or a cherished myth
you held for many years has been shat
tered. Lost in the hullabaloo over the
NCAA's death sentence and stay of
execution was the sound of a broken
myth clattering to the Memorial Sta
dium turf. That's the myth that the
lighter of the two Husker colors is
white, as in lily-white, pure white and
our-athletic-program-is-blameless white.
It's as much a part of the Nebraska
experience as loving the Marching
Red or hating the Sooners.
But the color is cream not quite
pure white. And we don't like it, so we
deny it.
Surrogate motherhood turning into
controversial rent-a-womb business
Her parents cannot agree on any
thing these days, not even on her
name. Her biological mother,
Mary Beth Whitehead, calls the 5-month-old
girl Sara. Her biological
father, William Stern, calls her Melissa.
The court in Bergen County, NJ., just
calls her Baby M.
The case that will come up on Wed
nesday is no ordinary custody fight
between estranged partners. These two
parents never had a relationship; they
had a deal. The intimacy was not one of
man and woman but of sperm and
ovum. Mary Beth Whitehead was hired
to be a surrogate mother.
When Stern, a biochemist, and his
wife Elizabeth, a pediatrician, disco
vered thev couldn't have children to
There's so much we all should be
disturbed about. The first is that the 60
players were guilty. UNL admitted as
much in its report to the NCAA; so did
Tom Osborne; so did a couple of the
players. The evidence is overwhelming:
there were people admitted to games
on players' pass lists that weren't "fam
ily members, relatives and fellow students."
Todd
von
Kampen
And the violations were widespread.
An Omaha World-Herald story Friday
noted that those who broke the rule 10
or fewer times were suspended for one
game, while those with 11 or more vio
lations have to sit out two. Fifty-three
Huskers received the one-game penalty
and seven the two-gamer. Figure it out.
At the very least, the rule was broken
130 times.
Even the brightest lights of the team
Taylor, McCathorn Clayton, Jones
and so on broke the rule. Worse,
most of the players took their actions
much too lightly. As senior linebacker
Kevin Parsons told the World-Herald,
"the guys laughed" when Osborne told
them about the rule last August. "They
said they couldn't keep that rule even
if they wanted to . . . It's totally unfair
and unworkable."
Maybe it's a stupid rule. But I wasn't
aware that it's so difficult for a Husker
player to distinguish between family
and friends, students and non-students.
We can try to change rules, but our
personal feelings about them don't give
us leeway to ignore them. Turning
yourself in is fine, but that doesn't
mean you should escape punishment.
gether, they went to an infertility
clinic. There, they met Whitehead, a
29-year-old mother of two, the wife of a
sanitation worker. And there they drew
up a contract.
Ellen KS',
Goodman sfy
Whitehead agreed to be artifically
inseminated with Stern's sperm, to
conceive and carry a baby for the cou
ple in return for $10,000. She signed on
- ' ,3k.
pure and lily-white
We've got a problem here. But it goes
far beyond the football team. Last year,
we had a basketball coach who felt he
could start practice before the NCAA
allowed. We had a women's gymnastics
coach who broke state law by taking
away the scholarships of two injured
stars. What happened last week was
only the final crack in the vase of pur
ity.' All of the above facts were duly
reported by the media. One would
think those who are proud of Nebras
ka's once-unchallenged reputation as a
"clean" school would be outraged. But
what did we witness? The Democratic
candidate for governor, UNL's chancel
lor, NU regents, students, newspapers,
ordinary citizens all cried out the
lightest NCAA penalty possible was too
harsh and the NCAA was out to "get"
Nebraska.
It's a sorry commentary on what has
happened to our senses of morals and
values. People used to think quality
education was most important and that
citizens had a duty to obey the laws.
Here in Nebraska, we have the state's
only major university falling apart at
the seams from budget cuts, appar
ently unnoticed by the public or the
polit icians. But they notice when their
weekend entertainment is put on the
ropes because the entertainers broke
the law and they go after the
policemen for doing their job.
Yes, we got our game Saturday night.
But we'll never get back the presump
tion of purity that followed the Huskers
around until last Wednesday. The way
Nebraskans from Scottsbluff to Omaha
reacted to last week's news shouldn't
go unnoticed, for it should make us all
wonder whether this whole collegiate
athletics industry is really worth losing
our souls.
Von Kampen is a senior news-editorial
and music major from Ogallala and is a
DN editorial page assistant.
the dotted line a promise that she
would not "form or attempt to form a
parent-child relationship" with the
baby she carried.
But when the baby was bom, White
head welched on the deal.
After turning Baby M over to the
Sterns, refusing their money, she "bor
rowed" her back. When the Sterns,
tried to reclaim the baby, the White
heads ran off with her. Finally, on July
31, Baby M was tracked down in Florida
-and returned to the Sterns and New
Jersey. "People treat it like we're fighting
over a car," says Whitehead now. "But
she's not a possession, she's a part of
me." She is also a part of William Stern;
See GOODMAN on 5
