What’s the purpose?
GEE test succeeds only in torturing students
I’ve suspected for a long time that
part of the purpose of a university
education is to gradually increase the
students’ resistance to diverse forms
of torture.
I’ve endured a 5-credit-hour eco
nomics class, taught by a man who
looked as though he’d rather be kick
ing the students than teaching them.
I’ve taken tests written by semi-liter
ate graduate students, and worse ones
written by tenured professors.
I’ve put up with a biannual round
of financial aid catastrophes, most of
which have been caused by stupidity
other than my own. I’ve seen tuition
increases come and comeagain. Ihave
persevered, and I have endured, much
longer than most reasonable people
would.
But this time I’ve had it. They’ve
really gone too far. I took the GRE this
weekend, and it was truly cruel and
unusual. I blame it on the bureaucrats,
if only because I despise their kind,
and they make a useful scapegoat for
all .sorts of horrors.
it all started witn some magnani
mous bureaucrat over at the financial
aid office. It (the bureaucrat) revoked
all of my federal financial aid this year
because I’m getting a dual degree. As
near as I could make out from the mass
of forms and rubber-stamped letters,
the fact that I am graduating with two
degrees means that I am no longer
making satisfactory progress toward
completion of the first one.
Anyway, this bureaucrat was the
catalyst. In my newfound poverty, I
qualified for a GRE fee waiver.
What the hell, I told myself—it’s
free. And one of these days I might
want to go to graduate school. So I
filled out the little bubble sheets to
register for the exam, slapped a 2x2
mug shot of myself on the admission
ticket and showed up at the allotted
time, after a torrid one-night stand
with a GRE prep book and a sample
test.
I was ushered into a room with an
unnaturally cheerful proctor and a
bunch of sleepy students. The room
was cold. The proctor told us that the
Jennifer Mapes
"... the passages used to
test my reading
comprehension were so
dense, dull, and badly
written that even the
most dedicated scholar
would lapse into a coma
by the third sentence. ”
room would get colder as the day
progressed, and that there was noth
ing they could do about it. To add to
the discomfort, the chairs in the room
were of a diabolical design. They had
a spoon-like profile and were made of
a slick plastic.
I was not prepared for the discom
fort, but I was well-prepared for at
least one aspect of the test, and that
was the probable outcome. Past expe
rience has assured me that on any
standardized test, I will do reasonably
well on the verbal sections, not too
bad with the analytical sections, and
that I will inevitably embarrass myself
with the math.
The first section was math. I knew
it would make me feel like an idiot. I
muddled through as best I could, think
ing that the last time I felt comfortable
with a math problem was back when
Sesame Street taught me to count to
10 in Spanish.
The next section went under the
heading of “analytical.” I attacked the
first few problems with an earnest
desire to figure them out. But my
analytical skills are notoriously er
ratic, and I was soon putting more
energy into an analysis of the possible
relevance of these problems to any
thing I might Attempt to do in my
lifetime.
An example: Captain Doh must
plant three patches of garden with six
crops. Beans can’t be planted next to
com, and if the maple tree is to the
right, then the daffodils should be
facing the house. The Captain is very
tall, and he sneezed three times while
planting tomatoes. Which of the fol
lowing must happen before the Cap
tain kills his chickens?
a) Hillary Rodham Clinton’s hairstyle
must change.
b) The com must be planted in Central
Asia.
c) The author feels that most indig
enous cultures have been abducted by
aliens.
d) Purple.
e) It cannot be determined from the
information given.
I used answer “e” a lot. Techni
cally, it’s correct.
Even the verbal sections gave me
trouble on this test. I knew what the
words meant. But the passages used to
test my reading comprehension were
so dense, dull, and badly written that
even the most dedicated scholar would
lapse into a coma by the third sen
tence.
At the end of the day, I was ex
hausted and indignant. My head hurt,
and my eyes wouldn’t focus.
The tests are written by dim-bulb
bureaucrats whose neckties have been
cutting oft' oxygen supply to their
brains for decades. The test was ex
cruciatingly long and given under ex
tremely uncomfortable conditions.
I think I failed the exam. At the
very least, 1 failed to see what it could
possibly have to do with my chances
for succeeding in graduate school.
Mapes is a senior advertising and his
tory major and a Dally Nebraskan colum
nist
Neat Legislature
Nebraska senators listen to public opinion
I guess it was a pretty important
year in the Nebraska Legislature.
Everyone’s talking about it —
breathing a sigh of relief that they
finally took some time to figure out
that nasty property lax problem.
Oh yeah, and they raised the
speed limit too.
After spending almost every day
of the past three months at the State
Capitol as the Daily Nebraskan’s
Legislature beat reporter — I’ll let
you in on a little secret. I really don’t
know what the hell a property tax is.
Still, I did my research. Reading
committee report after committee
report trying to piece it all together
— toward the end of the session, I
finally started to sort of get it.
But 1 still think all I really need to
know about taxes in my life right
now is that a $2.99 Whopper Value
meal costs $3.18.
And considering more than one
state senator came up to me over the
last 12 weeks and said they didn’t
really understand what was going on
with the issue either, I don’t feel so
bad.
Yeah, yeah, passing the property
tax relief package was an important
step for the Legislature to take. It
will affect a whole bunch of people
in a whole bunch of ways. I’m just
not sure exactly who and exactly
how.
You and I both know that you
didn’t read a single story with the
cute little “Legislature ’96" bug
unless the words “speed limit,”
“brewpub,” “abortion,” “same sex
marriages” or “comhusker” ap
peared in the headlines. ^
Those are issues that were before
the Legislature this session that will
have you and a friend talking during
calculus—not how high the
Malcolm school district’s property
tax levy would be.
Ted Taylor
"... passing the property
tax relief package ... will
affect a whole bunch of
people in a whole bunch
of ways. I’m just not
sure exactly who and
exactly how. ”
Those issues, and forgive me for
being so bland, made the 1996
session as “neat” as it was. Neat for
a college student and a young
person in general.
(There will be plenty of armchair
quarterback reviews of the 60-day
session, but I guarantee you won’t
sec the word “neat” in any of them.)
I say neat because in short time,
we all will be able to make the trip
home a little faster, thanks to the
higher speed limit; buy really cool
license plates that will show
everyone our “Huskcr Spirit,”
thanks to the spirit plate bill; and
possibly be able to drink Whooping
Wheat beer in the comforts of our
own home, thanks to... you guessed
it... the brewpub bill.
Those are the neat things you and
I will probably remember the most
about the 1996 session.
But the session will also be
remembered for two bills that didn’t
get very far, but far enough to get
people talking—and protesting—
about possible state laws.
I know I will never forget the
committee hearings on proposed
legislation that would ban abortions
in the slate and another that would
require the state to recognize a
marriage of two people who are in
love — but happen to be of the same
sex.
Neither of those bills made it to
the first round of floor debate, and
they probably never will.
Those two controversial bills
may not have had the same continu
ous media coverage as the speed
limit and property tax bills, but the
small amount of time they were in
the spotlight was more than enough
to implant an opinion in every
citizen (ie: student) in the state.
Which only goes to enhance my
earlier description of the 1996
session: Neat.
Neat to me because while I’m
speeding down 1-80 in my car with
the cool Comhusker spirit plates and
a keg of Whooping Wheat in the
back seat, I can actually carry on a
conversation about the Nebraska
Legislature.
Young people should take heed
that the 1996 Legislative session
was about much more than property
taxes, the state budget or even the
speed limit.
Whether they meant to or not,
some senators finally turned the
Unicameral into a sounding board
for public opinion rather than a
factory churning out the same old
generic policies.
And that’s pretty neat.
Taylor Is a junior news-editorial major
and a Daily Nebraskan senior reporter.
• • >■
Media turn sinner
to saint since death
In his masterful novel “The
Bridge of San Luis Rcy,”
Thornton Wilder traced the lives
of the five people who, on Friday
noon, July 20, 1714, converged
on the bridge between Lima and
Cuzco at the precise moment it
collapsed and flung them to their
death in the gulf below.
“Why did this happen to those
five?” asks Brother Juniper in
Wilder’s novel. “If there were any
plan in the universe at all, if there
were any pattern in human life,
surely it could be discovered
mysteriously latent in those lives
so suddenly cut off. Either we
live by accident and die by
accident, or we live by plan and
die by plan.”
On Wednesday morning, April
3,1996, 35 lives — 35 histories
— converged at Tuzla for a
journey that would end in twisted
wreckage scattered along a
Dubrovnik mountainside.
The answer to the question
“Why did this happen to them?”
— both on the bridge in Peru and
on the mountainside in Croatia —
will continue to elude us. But if
we believe there is an answer and
that we are not living in a
random, indifferent universe, a
new dimension of significance is
added to our lives, our public
lives and even the way we treat
our public figures.
The tragedy has thrust this new
dimension, however flectingly,
into our normally two-dimen
sional national conversation,
which tends to reduce public
figures to caricatures.
At the moment, death is the
great divider when it comes to
how we cover people in public
life. A statesman is a dead
politician, the saying goes, and
we see this tendency to vilify in
life and glorify in death fully
demonstrated in the case of Ron
Brown.
Only months before Brown
died, The New York Times had
called on the president “to ease
the commerce secretary back into
the private sector.” A1 Hunt had
pronounced him, in the The Wall
Street Journal, “unable to
distinguish between public
service and private gain.” Eleanor
Clifl had predicted his imminent
resignation on “The McLaughlin
Group.” And Michael Du fly had
ominously proclaimed in Time
that “Brown’s days arc beginning
to feel numbered.”
And these were his friends —
and neutral observers in the press.
As for his enemies, they fully
expected his indictment before
the year’s end for a host of
conflict-of-interest and ethical
violations, following the Justice
Department’s investigation into
allegations of financial miscon
duct.
Then, in a blinding flash on the
Dubrovnik mountainside, the
sinner turned into a saint and the
denunciations into hosannas.
In the days since his tragic
death, Ron Brown has been -
extolled by friend and foe alike as
Arianna Huffington
“A statesman is a dead
politician, the saying
goes, and we see this
tendency to vilify in
life and glorify in
death fully
demonstrated in the
case of Ron Brown. ”
“a magnificent life force,” “an
inspirational leader,” “a renais
sance man of politics,” and a man
who “could accomplish anything
because he didn’t believe he
couldn’t do it.”
But then, even Richard Nixon
got an eulogy from President
Clinton.
Would it not transform our
public discourse and the coverage
of public figures while they are
alive if even as we raise legiti
mate questions about their
conduct, we also acknowledge
their qualities and contributions?
Could we not praise what is
praiseworthy at the same time
investigate what needs to be
investigated and condemn what
needs to be condemned?
This may be loo much to ask
of political opponents. But what
about those covering our leaders?
The Wall Street Journal, which
had been scathing in successive
editorials about Ron Brown,
acknowledged after his death that
“one had to admire his evident,
steady success...” The man the
Journal had described as “the
Beltway wheeler-dealer” was now
being lauded as “skilled, articu
late ... a personal force ... a
player.” Wasn’t he all those
things even as he was a Beltway -
wheeler-dealer?
But the effect of every media
feeding frenzy is to magnify the
transgression until it eclipses
everything else — until nothing
else, and especially nothing good,
can be seen.
Maybe the solution is to have
an obituary writer play a part in
every political scandal story. Is
the scandal so enormous that it
eliminates everything positive, or
can there at least be a sidebar
about the rest of the person’s life?
If Thornton Wilder set out to
write the stories of the 35 men
and women who died on the
Dubrovnik mountainside, they
would be fully human stories —
with the light and the shadow
sides showing, and no doubt some
flaws and imperfections that
would not be included in the
eulogies.
Isn’t it time wc grew up and
recognized that our public
figures, like the rest of us, arc not
hewn from a single block?
(C) 1996, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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