Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 1981)
7 The Battalion stratej ’astosto Owls, { aontrold cruoj sink Teg Meta! ; defeiist on again M, las •se, all#. Ricefe 'n picks. ; Owls'a- ggies sin ie!d,alj: 1 p«rcfii iame.ls ?42.5pei. ted32ie wls, ucialhl ’ Arkaiii G, Ro|J freskili i, defeat* buttkiip meastk be confe. tail,*] lay into ton’s tal’ nticAgp d calrai] night,” k flked rti •n i •i Serving the Texas A&M University community Vol. 74 No. 99 12 Pages Tuesday, February 17, 1981 College Station, Texas USPS 045 360 Phone 845-2611 The Weather ) Yesterday Today High 68 High . ... .70 Low 42 Low 52 Rain . . . . . none Chance of rain. . none Budget, officers OK’d by council P8 lat. | l>.m. >•11 By KATHY O’CONNELL Battalion Staff MSC Council members Monday night approved recommendations by the Budget Review Committee for 1981-82. The total recommended budget for next year’s MSC Council and Directo rate programs is $1,323,599, a five per cent increase over last year’s $1.25 mil lion programming budget. * The council will request $204,442 (15.4 percent) of the budget in student service fees at Finance Committee hearings Thursday. Keith ShurtlefF, council vice president for finance, said the council is requesting a 14.6 percent increase over last year’s student service fee allocation. The other funds in the budget are to come from generated revenue, which includes ticket sales from the various programs and donations from outside sources. ShurtlefF said the Finance Committee asked the council to keep its student service fee request to within a 10 per cent to 14 percent increase. He said the request would have been consider ably less; however, MSC Political Forum asked for a significant increase in its budget because of the rising cost of bringing top quality speakers to campus. dent service fee request — $25,949, up $9,000 (53 percent) from last year’s $16,949 — is justified because students are wanting to hear better speakers and this costs more. “If Political Forum is to present quality speakers,” he said, then more money will have to be budgeted.” Another reason the budget is higher. he said, is because council approved the “Madrigal Dinners” as a new council project. Keith Bland and Kim Griffiths presented the proposal to the council and discussed the reasons for making the dinners a council project. They think the Medieval Madrigal Dinner would be “an excellent way to usher in the Christmas season and be a welcomed tradition the students and community will look forward to year af ter year.” The dinners are to be held three con secutive evenings and will include en tertainment, a craft fair, menu and cos tumes representing the Renaissance Era. The council also discussed the role of non-voting members. There had been concern among members about the lack of attendence from four of the six non voting council members. These include representatives from the Corps of Cadets, Off-Campus Aggies, Residence Halls Association, the Graduate Stu dent Council, class councils and The Battalion. Brien Smith, Married Student Coun cil representative, said “every thing the council does affects the other groups and they should be present at the meet ings.” At the Feb. 2 meeting the council approved a proposal to include the Mar ried Student council as a non-voting member. Smith presented the prop osal. Council President Emen Haby sug gested a committee be established to study the purpose, objectives, organiza tional structure and programming effi ciency of four directorate committees. This suggestion was made based on the findings of the Budget Review Commit tee when it reviewed budget requests. These committees are Committees for Awareness for Mexican-American Culture, Arts Committee, Black Awareness Committee and Recreation. Tfie Program Study Committee will investigate the four committees and present a report to the council at the March 2 meeting. The council approved Nominating Committee recommendations for the 1981-82 council officers: — Kirk Kelley, vice president stu dent development and Lisa Brubacher, director of personnel; — Craig Hanks, vice president of programs and Brenda Svrcek, coordina tor of programs; — Paul Fischer, vice president of operations; Louise Morgan, director of MSC services; Bob Pfluger, director of non-MSC services; — Doug Noah, vice president of de velopment; Eugene Alford, director of development fund raising; Steven Wong, director of development fi nance; Scott Zesch, director of devel opment public relations; — Todd Norwood, vice president of finance and and Julie Klabunde, direc tor of funds; and — Cindy Keep, director of promo tions. The new table of organization shows these vacancies to still be open: vice president for public relations, director of advertising/publicity, director of accounts, director of budget/planning, director of procedures, two coordina tors of projects and three coordinators of programs. Beatlemania Richie Gomez looks and sings like former Beatle George Harrison in Monday night’s MSC Town Hall presentation of “Beatlemania.” For a review of the performance, see Thursday’s Focus. Made-to-order research papers have some risks Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series looking at the problems of cheating and scholastic dishonesty at Texas A&M. d's ® jiiet- ;ents iport hose their lain- ctive By MARJORIE M. MCLAUGHLIN Battalion Staff ‘‘Aggies do not lie, cheat or steal, nor do they tolerate those who do. ” — The Aggie Code of Honor The advertisements are pinned to cluttered bulletin boards all over campus: “Research papers on every subject.” The number and nature of subjects available through the mail is formidable. One California research firm, operating since 1970, has a catalogue with 10,000 listings, ranging from supermarkets to ancient Greek and Roman literature. This company claims a staff of professional writers create thousands of papers annually. A phone order can be filled “within two minutes and be in the mail within four hours,” according to the catalogue, and 24-hour-delivery is possible if the paper is shipped by express messenger. At $4 per page, these ready-made papers are not cheap. For a price, even original papers and dissertations are available. But apparently to some college students throughout the coun try, the convenience of buying a research paper is worth the cost. What students don’t figure into the price of mail-order research papers is the price of getting caught committing plagiarism. “I feel strongly about this,” said Dr. David Stewart, head of the Texas A&M English department. “It is a form of theft — trying to steal grades.” The 1980-81 Texas A&M University Regulations (sec. 34-1) state that instructors must report apparent scholastic dishon esty in writing through the head of the department to the dean of that particular college. Professors have the option of either lowering the student’s final grade or failing him. Stewart said he couldn’t recall any cases of mail-order term papers in the English department in the past five years. Most plagiarism cases handled in his department are cases of people borrowing other people’s research papers, or copying papers out of library books. He said that often, freshmen are honestly confused about what constitutes plagiarism, having been taught in high School that the way to write a research paper is to copy material out of library books. He said that a handout is given to all freshman English students, outlining what constitutes plagiarism. Katherine O’Keeffe, assistant English professor, said in structors try to assign restricted topics to make it harder for students to buy ready-made papers. But, she added, stu dents with enough money can pay for someone to do their research. - “It’s not only cheating pure and simple, it’s also acting against other students in the class,” she said, calling the use of such papers, an “economic cheat.” Stewart said there is no set method for proving that a mail-order term paper has been used, but that most teachers “instinctively” know when the paper is not written by the student who turns it in. Most teachers assign impromptu papers throughout the semester to learn each student’s style. Often, if a teacher suspects a paper has been purchased, or copied, the teacher might ask the student questions about what some phrase or word means and catch the student that way, Stewart said. Dr. Henry Dethloff, interim head of the history depart ment, said that he was unaware of any cases in his depart ment, but added that each semester, teachers wonder about some papers. He remarked that if teachers require outlines and sources, mail-order papers shouldn’t be a problem. “It shouldn’t happen if a course is run correctly,” he said. By monitoring each stage of students’ papers, assistant history professor Dr. Chester Dunning feels that he can be “95 percent sure” that plagiarism problems don’t occur in his classes. Dunning requires that topics be on based on specific class reading assignments. In his advanced classes, he requires preliminary bibliographies and one-on-one meetings with students to discuss their topics, outlines and approaches to their papers. He then usually changes the approach slightly, narrowing the topic. Complete bibliographies and outlines are required before students begin work on the paper. Dunning said he has received three mail-order research papers since teaching at Texas A&M, but because less writing is required in undergraduate courses, the problem is not as prevalent here as at other colleges. When he receives a plagiarized paper, Dunning fails the student on the assignment. If the problem occurs again, the student fails the course. “It’s a fantastic business that should be stamped out,” Dun ning said. “I’m all for free enterprise, but I’m also for the integrity of the academic profession. ” The Battalion ran an ad for a California research firm last semester. Don Johnson, coordinator of student publications, said that the national advertising agency which handles The Battalion’s national ads arranged for placing the research paper advertisements. After complaints from the faculty, The Battalion notified the agency that the ad would not be run in the future, Johnson said. “We told them that we had had objections to (the ad’s) propriety,” he said. Mail-order research services stand to make large profits, with prices ranging from $4 a page for already written papers, to $11.95 a page for graduate custom papers. But, as Stewart remarked, most students don’t get what they expect for their money. He said that the few papers he has seen were about C-quality work, complete with a few misspelled words and grammar errors, designed to look like natural mistakes. “I have never seen one (paper) that I would fail, but I’ve never seen one that I would give an A,” he said. rant ohn Flat land helped disabled building-mapper Photo by Becky Swanson Roddy Dunnell, a senior engineering technology major, practices his bowling form in the MSC bowling alley. By KATHY O’CONNELL Battalion Staff To some people getting around campus is nothing. To Roddy Dunnell, it’s a challenge. Dunnell, who is confined to a wheelchair, is active in helping other handicapped students on eampus. In fact, he’s so active he’s mapped and cataloged every building on the Texas A&M University campus that has wheelchair access. The handbook, entitled “Ac cess,” was printed through the office of the vice presi dent for student services. Starting last spring and finishing in the summer, Dunnell said he went to every building, restroom and ramp to see what accommodations are available for handicapped students. “It was a long hot summer,” he said. “The good thing about here (Texas A&M) is that it’s flat. Hills are a real pain.” The size of the campus makes it difficult, he said, but there is a special shuttle bus that takes handicapped students from one side of campus to the other. “Originally, our club, Students Concerned for the Handicapped, was doing it (mapping the campus),” Dunnell said. “We split it up into seven sections and were each going to take a section. It ended up only one other person mapped a section.” Dunnell said he “figured it was needed” so he didn’t mind the extra six sections. Dunnell said there are about 100 students on cam pus with handicaps and 10 to 12 in wheelchairs. He said his main concern is to eliminate the barriers facing these students. “Right now a real big problem is parking — people parking across curb cuts or bicycle riders and skaters that use the curb cuts.” he said. “They don’t realize that they’re made for people in wheelchairs. “We’re in the process of having wheelchair signs painted on all the curb cuts. ” This should make every one realize what the curb cuts are intended for, he said. Dunnell said wheelchair access at Texas A&M is comparable, if not better, to other schools. He said the University of Texas has good facilities but the hills make it difficult to get around. At the University of Houston, he said, it’s crowded and people are incon siderate, by parking bikes in front of the ramps or near the handrails. That happens here, he said, but not as often. Dunnell said another concern of his is reaching “program accessibility.” This means figuring out where different classes should be held and if the build ings are accessible. “For example,” he said, “in chemistry lab, the building is accessible, but the tables are to high for a wheelchair. You can pick up a lot by watching, but it’s not the same.” Dunnell said he worked with Dr. Rod O’Connor, chemistry professor, and designed a lab table which is now being built. The senior engineering technology major said he doesn’t see his disability as a handicap. “It’s all in your attitude. It’s not really a handicap to me, it just hinders me in some things. You can’t look back, if you look back you’ll start feeling sorry for yourself. ” Dunnell’s disability resulted from a spinal injury he suffered while platform diving in 1976. He said he went through a period where he felt sorry for himself. “It hurt my grades bad, but I just couldn’t stop. I’m a very straightforward person. I can’t stop something once I’ve started.” Dunnell said his disability is more difficult for his friends to accept than it is for him. “It’s mainly harder for my older friends who knew me before I was in the chair. They don’t know how to treat me.” Not only is he involved in Students Concerned for the Handicapped, but he is also active in the Associa tion of Handicapped Athletes. He said there are bas ketball and bowling teams for handicapped students on campus. They hold basketball practice on Monday and Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The players get quite a work out and Dunnell said they need it. “What people don’t realize,” he said, “is that people in wheelchairs need to be more active. Our systems don’t fight off colds as well.” He said the team plays by rules set up by the Nation al Wheelchair Basketball Association. According to the rules, people have to have a 15 percent disability to play in the league. Fifteen percent disability means the person has bad knees or weak ankles and uses a wheelchair. Wheelchair basketball is classified into different levels, he said, and depending on the type of disabil ity, the player is allowed a certain amount of points per game. For example, he said, players in level three (15 percent disability) are allowed three points per game. Dunnell considers himself a fair shot. “I’m getting better. My shooting average is about 60 percent.” He said the physical education department is trying to organize a regular sports event for handicapped students every semester, which would include table tennis, backgammon and chess, as well as basketball and bowling. He said most of the games would be held in the MSC bowling center. After graduation in May, Dunnell said he wants to design buildings that have total wheelchair access. He considers this very important for people in wheel chairs. Although he’s not sure what the job prospects are, but he hopes they’ll be good. One thing is for sure though, he knows who he is. “I don’t want to be singled out. I’ve learned to be very patient. I’m still myself, I just can’t walk any more. I hate the fact that I’m in a wheelchair, always will, but I have no choice. You just can’t stop being persistent.”