Equality now
' . S ’ ■ . ' "y■ ,| ;
Don’t tolerate unfairness of your professors
Americans like to believe in the
notion of fair play. At least, that
always has been my understanding
of this nation’s founding principles.
Now take this belief and apply it
to the workplace, or your family ...
or the-institution of higher learning
you are now attending.
Stop for a minute. Put down that
cup of coffee. Set aside the newspa
per, and consider your situation. Do
you feel you arc being treated fairly
in your associations and relation
ships with other people?
It’s a pretty broad question, and
it’s meant to be. But the idea itself is
fairly simple. Quid pro quo. Equal
ity. Do unto others as you would
have them do unto you.
Fairness would seem to be a
straightforward concept to under
stand. The problems start with the
application level. Or lack thereof—
otherwise known as THE SHAFT.
For some strange reason, an
attitude persists in our learning
institutions today that treats students
as subservient to the educational
systems of which they arc a part.
Examples of this abound. Students
undertaking internships that offer
little or no financial support or
guidance. Charging students special
material or participation fees,
without stipulating how these fees
arc being used. Combining
undergrad and graduate students in
the same classes. Charging outra
geous sums of money for required
texts written by instructors.
Or worst of all, instructor
attitudes that treat the student as
merely an addendum to the process,
or responsibility, of instruction.
Fred Poyner
“If instructors want to.
play career politics, they
should save it for the
faculty lounge. ”
When someone asks me to work
with them on a project, as a fellow
professional, I devote my time and
energy to that project to the best of
my ability. My commitment to the
project includes making a commit
ment to the others involved. This is
my understanding of profcssionalisrr
and an instrumental part of my
learning program.
Expecting this treatment in return
is my definition of fairness. Despite
my status as a graduate student, this
isn’t always proving to be the case.
My advice to some instructors,
who shall remain nameless, is that if
you feel threatened by working with
students on projects, don’t waste
their time by asking their help in the
first place. If you think their input is
going to somehow diminish your
own role, DON’T ASK THEM TO
MAKE A COMMITMENT, AND
THEN LEAVE THEM HANGING.
If you don’t have the time or
inclination to work with students, do
them Mid yourself a favor and point
them in a better direction.
If instructors want to play career
politics, they should save it for the
faculty lounge. Deciding on a whim
that you no longer want to serve on a
particular student’s graduate
committee or work with a student on
a particular independent study
project is taking advantage of the
student, plain and simple. I don’t
care if you have tenure, and I don’t
cMe if you are about to retire—the
students of today are going to
remember the B.S. you pulled on
them in the future.
For the students out there, be
secure in the knowledge that you
have recourse to this land of
treatment, not the least of which is
the fact that you help pay instruc
tors’ salaries.
Also, there mc several organiza
tions and individuals at the Univer
sity of Nebraska expressly created
for student grievances, including the
student Ombudsperson and the
Office of Student Judicial Affairs.
Think not only abput the concept
of fairness, but its practice as well at
the university level and on all other
levels of society. Letting professors
walk over you now with unfair
treatment could set a bad precedent
for how you run your own profes
sional career after school.
In this comer...
Poyuer is a graduate stndeat In mascara
studies and a Dally Nebraskan columnist
Late arrival
.. h ■ it.; -• •
Clinton finally fighting teen-age pregnancy
Two years ago, a domestic policy
adviser to President Clinton assured
me that the president was consider
ing a national campaign to fight
teen-age pregnancy. I didn’t doubt it
The question is whether the man
who appointed Joycclyn Elders as
surgeon general would have any idea
of what such a campaign should
consist.
Now, as part of a larger effort to
appropriate conservative cultural
themes as he plots a re-election
strategy, President Clinton has
announced that “All of us must work
together to send a clear message to
our young people that staying in
school, postponing sexual activity
and preparing to work are the right
thing to do.”
The president is late to this party.
Scores of grass-roots groups,
churches and private organizations
are struggling to reverse the frighten
ing out-of-wedlock birth statistics in
the United States. Nationwide, the
number of children bom illegitimate
is now 31 percent — 22 percent t>f
whites and 68 percent of blacks —
and rising. One grass-roots activist I
spoke with resents what he secs as
the president’s “trivialization” of the
problem.
“To pigeonhole this as a problem
of youth behavior is to miss die
point. It lets adults and the culture
we adults have created off the hook.
Children are behaving this way
because everyone is behaving this
way. You can’t just say, ‘Let’s send
a message to kids not to dd this,’
when everyone else is doing it.”
Moreover, the picture of teen
childbearing is not as simple as the
president would portray it. As recenl
data from the Alan Guttmacher
Institute and others have shown, hall
of the fathers of babies bom to
mothers between the ages of 15 and
17 are 20 years old or older. Teen
age pregnancy is not just the
Mona Charon
*Teen-age pregnancy is
not just the consequence
of over-sexed high
schoolers getting
- carried away in the
backseat of a
convertible. ”
consequence of over-sexed high
schooolcrs getting carried away in
the back scat of a convertible.
Even leaving all of that aside, the
question remains: What message will
the president’s campaign send to
kids? The problem with liberal
approaches to avoiding teen preg
nancy is insincerity. Sex educators
say, “We don’t think sexual inter
course is appropriate until you are
older—but if you are going to do it
anyway, here is how you can protect
yourself against pregnancy and
disease.’’ These same educators take
a very different tone on drugs. The
schools don’t offer lessons on how
to sterilize needles (“if you’re going
to do it anyway"). They teach
abstinence, pure and simple.
Kids pick up the distinction with
alacrity. Studies on the efficacy of
sex education in preventing early
sexual initiation have shown
negative correlations. The more sex
education a community has, the
more trouble with pregnancy,
abortion and sexually transmitted
diseases.
But not all programs aimed at
reducing teen-age pregnancy have
failed. Best Friends, a Washington,
D.C.-based program for inner-oity
girls, has shown dramatic results in
the last decade teaching abstinence,
sell-respect and decision-making.
And there are other programs around
the nation that succeed with similar
messages.
President Clinton indicated the
kind of message he would send to
kids with the naming of Dr. Henry
Foster, last year’s rejected candidate
for surgeon general, as his adviser
on these matters. Foster’s “I Have A
Future” program, touted as a model
by Presidents Bush (who listed the
program among the Thousand Points
of Light) and Clinton (who hailed it
as an “unqualified success”), in fact
failed to reduce pregnancies among
the girls in the program. Indeed,
according to an evaluation by the
Statistical Assessment Service of
Washington, D.C., the program
actually showed paradoxical effects
— increasing the level of sexual
activity among participants in the
program as compared with a control
group. Girls who participated in
Foster’s program demonstrated
much higher levels of knowledge *
about sexual matters, but this did not
translate into chaste behavior. -'
President Clinton wants to have it
all ways—to placate the left by
including Whoopi Goldberg and
MTV President Judy McGrath on his
national commission and to com
mandeer the rhetoric of the right.
But as the Foster appointment makes
clear, the Clinton contribution to
solving the problem will be worse
than doing nothing.
(C) 1996, Creators Syndicate, lac.
Parenthood means
more than a V-chip
Some issues can be so confus
ing. As a parent, I can’t make up
my mind about the V-chip that
the government wants put in
future TV sets.
These chips will permit
parents to block shows they don’t
want their kids to see, such as
those that are lewd, violent or just
plain stupid.
At first, this struck me as being
a fine idea. I’ve channel-surfed
the cable stations enough to know
that at night it is a shower of
heavy sex and blood-splattering
violence.
I’m not a prude, but I think
that children are better off not
seeing the first dozen positions of
the Kama Sutra or hearing some
comic boast about the size of his
male appendage.
At least that’s what I thought
until I heard various wise people
of the liberal persuasion explain
on TV and in the press why the
V-chip is such a dumb idea.
As they put it, “all a parent has
to do is turn off the TV ... It’s up
to parents to monitor what their .
kids watch on TV.... If parents
accept their responsibilities, they
don’t need a V-chip.”
How can anyone argue with
that?
And now that I think about it,
that’s similar to things I’ve been
saying for years.
ror example, mere is me
problem of education and the
many kids who go through eight
years of grammar school and four
years of high school without
learning much about reading,
writing or arithmetic.
I’ve always said that the lion’s
share of the blame should be
aimed at the parents.
In a typical week, a kid is in
school for about 30 or 35 hours.
And he or she will be only one of
25 or 30 kids with whom one * -
teacher must deal. On the other
hand, a parent or parents will
have responsibility for about 130
or more hours a week. And most
parents don’t have to deal with 25
or 30 little creatures.
Then there are the four or five
very important formative years
before the kid starts school when
the parents have sole responsibil
ity. Thousands and thousands of
hours. And you can add even
more hundreds of days and
thousands of hours when the kids
are on summer vacation, Christ
mas vacation, spring break and all
the holidays.
If you look at the numbers,
' you’ll see that kids are exposed to
teachers only a fraction of the
time that they are supposed to be
under the control of mommy and
daddy, or one of them. So I’ve
always believed that teachers and
the schools get far too much of
the blame for the rising number of
near-illiterates that are being
produced in many school systems.
My theory also extended to the
rising crime rate among young
people. ,
If kids are to learn right from
wrong, they are supposed to learn
from the parent or parents. Who
else is supposed to do it? By the
Tm not a prude, but I
think that children are
better off not seeing the
first dozen positions of
the Kama Sutra ...”
Mike Royko
time a police officer, a judge or a
prison guard gets involved, it’s a
little late. And while it is thought
ful of a basketball star to go on
TV and make a public-service
announcement aimed at wayward
youths, it’s unrealistic to expect
some 15-year-old to say: “Hey,
that slam dunker says we should
be good lads. So let’s stop
dealing drugs and dump our guns
and forget about robbing the
grocer or the cabdriver and see if
we can find a good Scout meeting
to attend.”
But whenever I wrote some
thing like that, I would be
promptly slapped down by those
who had taken more sociology
courses than I had.
They would say: “You can’t
blame the parents for educational
failures. It is a failure by the
school systems and an uncaring
society.”
And when this was explained
to me, I would have to slap my
head and say: “How could I be so
stupid as to expect someone to -
take responsibility for encourag
ing their children to learn to read
and write and not to go out at
night and mug children?”
I remember how everyone
hooted and jeered at a guy named
Bemie Epton, who ran for mayor
and was asked at a big gathering,
“What will you do about our
children dropping out of school?”
And he said: “As mayor of
Chicago, I won’t be able to do
anything about your kids drop
ping out of school. Keeping your
kids in school is your responsibil
ity”
Everyone agreed Epton was a
mope, and he lost.
But now many of the people,
the ones who say that I was an
unfeeling fool for suggesting that
parents had responsibilities and
that Epton was insensitive by
saying the same thing, are
preaching something entirely
different. Now it’s tne parents’
job to turn off the TV or make
sure the kids are watching
something nice.
That’s a start, I guess, but
there should be more to parenting
than knowing how to use a
zapper.
(C) 1996, the Chicago Trlbaae
