Monday, November 28,1983/The Battalion/Page 3 e ‘truth’ about Chem 101 O’Conner to tell his side by Pat Allen t Battalion Reporter There’s been a lot of stuff the dean and department head have said in the news papers that are flat out lies,” lays Dr. Rod O’Conner, who was formerly head of the First Year Chemistry Program at Texas A&M. I O’Conner says he will tell the truth about the reasons for the reconstruction of the che mistry program at 8:30 inight in 302 Rudder. The Ik is being sponsored by xademic Affairs and is the first time O’Conner has spoken publicly about the anges. O’Conner came to Texas AS.M in 1973. He said he was ed with a written term of pointment that gave him a ee hand in running the pgram. “I don’t know how binding that is legally, but it sure iould have been ethically,” I’Conner said. O’Conner said the depart ment head told him the che- piistry program wasn’t de manding enough and that stu dents should be forced to attend the section they were registered in. Other faculty memebers in the chemistry department were angry be cause they had very low attendance for their lectures and O’Conner’s lectures were always standing room only. “They wanted to lower the grades, mainly the A’s,” O’Conner said. “That’s a very easy thing to do. All you have to do is cut out office hours, try to get as many faculty as possible that are new to the program and don’t know how to approach it, and write exam questions as ambiguous and poorly as you can. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to do that.” O’Conner had three choices. He could make the changes the department asked him to make: a more demanding class which would bring grades down and force students to attend their assigned section. He could ignore the requests and con tinue running the program with the possibility of being fired and losing his tenure on the grounds of insubordina tion. He could resign as direc tor. He resigned as director and is now on a leave af absence. “I thought that my resigna tion as director would gener ate someone in that adminis trative structure to say this must be more serious than we thought it was,” O’Conner said. “I appealed to the dean and he told me I was right and this thing shouldn’t have hap pened but he had to back the department head. My son talked directly to Bum Bright and Bright told him that it was a simple matter of challenging the chain of command and that they would not tolerate a challenge to the chain of com mand.” The University has some documents that show the per formances of students who have been involved in the che mistry program but O’Conner said they won’t release them publicly. “Why is the University keeping those documents sec ret?” O’Conner said. “If they’ve got nothing to hide and they have clean hands and they claim I’ve lied about it, then let them bring it out in public and let everybody read it.” O’Conner has seen a copy of one of this year’s exams and he feels it was poorly written. He said he heard this year’s grades were considerably worse than last year and he heard that there is little office hour help. “I’ve deliberately avoided trying to find things out be cause the situation got me so emotionally upset that I got physically ill last spring with high blood pressure,” O’Con ner said. “I’d have nightmares about the University and wake up with my heart beating 99 mph.” He doesn’t come around campus anymore. This year was the first year he could have arm chair seats for the football games and he gave away his tickets for every game. A&M to house election data collection system by David Manning Battalion Reporter A Texas A&M historian says Texas will soon benefit from a new computerized data- collecting system that will enable social scientists to use historical and contemporary Texas elec tion records. Dr. Dale Baum, professor of history, said a collection known as the Texas Data Archives will be used by scholars, graduate students and political parties to study election returns, voter trends and voter turnouts. Baum said the archives will store all Texas election returns from as far back as 1846. The system is designed to put all election returns into a com puter so it can used for research in the future, Baum said. Social scientists will be able to study the extent to which Tex ans crossed party lines in the past so that prediction trends can be established for future elections, he said. “If you’re going to study elec tion returns, you have to have statistics from previous years to formulate your data,” he said. Historically, Texas has been one of the worst states when it comes to keeping results from past election returns, he said. Many Texas counties have never recorded vote totals and others have lost them, Baum said. Mark Stubbs, a graduate assis tant, said information from past Texas elections can be useful to political parties who are target ing a certain area of the state for future elections. Stubbs and four other gradu ate students are working on mic rofilming past Texas secretary of state reports and documents from all ele 1846. election returns since Follow Us To Your New Villa Villa Oaks West 1107 Verde ph. 779-U36 2 Bid I'A Bath '365. 2 Bid 2 Bath \VW. OPEN HOUSE Mon-Fri 9:00-5:00 Sat & Sun 1:00-5:00 sixplosion 0[ Two killed in New York fireworks explosion United Press International : )nishe.f LLPORT ’ N - Y - Aseries is doini ns redisl is a sera what | g aboi fc kplosions leveled a fireworks bry Saturday in a burst of jets and a mushroom cloud, fig two employees and heavi- bmaging 20 nearby homes, ur other workers were mis- uwenty-three people were jted for minor injuries at khaven Memorial Hospital ical Center in nearby Patch- said spokesman Kevin Miller. 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