Friday, September 28, 1984rThe Battalion/Page 5
Vandiver praises faculty scholar program
By ROBIN BLACK
Senior Staff Writer
■ Texas A&M University has made
dramatic strides over the last two
years in establishing and pursuing
an active endowed faculty scholar
program, University President
Frank E. Vandiver said Thursday.
I Vandiver’s enthusiasm follows the
' Board of Regents’ $10 million ap
propriation Monday for the En
dowed Faculty Scholars Program.
Hg‘The $10 million will come out of
the Available University Fund —
part of the Permanent University
Fund that A&M gets a chunk of each
year — and will be used to match
private donations to the program.
The endowment program is four-
faceted.
The University oversees endow
ments for academic chairs,
professorships and faculty and grad
uate fellowships. Each category must
have a minimum endowment gift:
named chairs must receive at least
$500,000, professorships must re
ceive at least $150,000, and faculty
and graduate fellowships a mini
mum of $75,000.
Under guidelines set up by the
University in late 1983, if the mini
mum donation for each endowment
is met, the University will supply
matching funds for a second endow
ment under the same category.
The money for the various chairs
and fellowships can be used for
things ranging from research and
new equipment to salary supple
ments attractive to prospective fac
ulty.
Vandiver said the chairs are an as
set when A&M is recruiting faculty,
because not only do they attract top
professors, but they also attract peo
ple who want to work with distin
guished chair-holders.
Total funding the regents gave
the program last year was $7 million.
“Just by looking at how we’re
doing with the program right now,”
Vandiver said, “the $10 million
might be a conservative estimate of
what we’ll need.”
There are 30 endowed chairs at
the University now — only 11 of the
chairs are filled and some of the
chairs yet to be Filled are still pen
ding final funding.
There are 39 professorships — 16
of them filled — and 31 graduate
fellowships, none of which have
been filled.
Nine of the chairs — the majority
— are in the College of Engineering.
Vandiver explains:
“People donate the money for the
chairs to the college they like. Lots
just happen to like engineering. A
lot of that has to do with the college’s
prominence.”
The business college isn’t doing
too badly, either — it’s second with
four chairs.
When somebody donates money
for a chair or fellowship, they get to
decide which college the matching
endowment goes to.
“We give them suggestions which
college they might pick the other
chair to go to, but it’s all up to them,”
Vandiver said.
Vandiver said he’d like to see a
chair established in the liberal arts
college, but so far the only endow
ment the college has is a single grad
uate fellowship.
A&M trails its rival — the Univer
sity of Texas — substantially in en
dowed chairs and fellowships.
Yale students coping with strike
siS
United Press International
I NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Some
1,500 white collar workers, mostly
women, continued striking against
Yale University Thursday, forcing
students off the Ivy League campus
for a second day into makeshift
classrooms and to fast-food restau
rants for meals.
« Their walkout — bolstered by the
refusal of the 1,300-member affiliate
• piaintenance and food service work
ers’ union to cross campus-wide
E icket lines — failed to halt classes,
ut 12 of 13 dining halls closed and a
lack of technicians stalled cancer re
search at the Yale School of Medi
cine.
si The largest strike in Yale’s 283-
iear history stemmed from the
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30.
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TATIO*
union’s rejection Tuesday of its first
ever contract, <jn the grounds of al
leged discrimination over wages and
job security. Yale called it a final of
fer.
No new talks were scheduled and
prospects of a long strike seemed
likely.
Most members of the Local 34,
Federation of University Employees,
are women. It represents 257 job ti
tles, including secretaries, reception
ists, phone operators, nurses, mu
seum attendants, trainers, library
aides, administrative assistants and
research technicians earning an av
erage of $13,400.
About 100 of 1,500 classes were
held off campus Thursday in com
munity halls, churches, private
homes, apartments and the York
Square Cinema.
“As faculty members, we feel it’s
part of our duty as educators to
teach people not to cross picket
lines,” said Richard Halpern, a Re
naissance literature professor, and
an organizer of the off-campus
classes.
Terry Odendahl, a professor of
anthropology, used a home com
puter to set up off-campus classes
and said 600 faculty members asked
to be included in the scheduling.
A woman student who didn’t want
to be identified said she prefered
off-campus classes. “Their main
point is to disrupt the university as
much as they can. It’s a move I’m
willing to make to show my sup
port.”
Many students said eating off-
campus on $72.80 — the weekly
amount Yale reimbursed each stu
dent for 21 meals — was an inconve
nience, but generally sympathized
with the strikers.
Strikers interviewed said the issue
was “comparable worth.”
Mary Skurat, a $12,000-a-year art
library assistant with a college de
gree, said she and others were un
derpaid.
“I feel my reimbursement should
be equal to the job I do,” she said.
She and her husband are paying tu
ition at various schools for three chil-
ren, including a Yale junior.
State senator speaks atAggie Democrats meeting
Caperton blasts Gramm’s stance
m kocrI
ds
“The
I nend I
■els pn«|
s year, a si
ted as wSf
By MICHELE FURLONG
Reporter
State Sen. Kent Caperton told a
group of students “it is hard to be
the conscience of a close-knit com
munity when you are in the minori-
Caperttfn’s speech, sponsored by
the Aggie Democrats, was held
Thursday night in 601 Rudder.
Caperton said that a major prob
lem with the student body is that
they will not vote for any Democrat,
no matter how qualified, because
they do not have the “cloak of Re
publican approval.”
“I have always considered myself
the champion of the students,” the
former student body president said.
He expressed disappointment in the
trend of the student body toward
voting Republican without regard to
issues, simply because it was the
thing to do.
Caperton spoke out against Re
publican Sen. Phil Gramm for his
stance on student loans. “It is the ul
timate in hypocrisy for someone like
Phil Gramm to go to college on a
federal program. . .and then turn
around and cut them out,” he said.
“If you have a cause to foster or
goal to pursue, it should be the de
feat of Phil Gramm, as he represents
a threat to the rational approach to
politics or solving problems,” Caper
ton said.
Caperton urged the students to
support Lloyd Doggett in his cam
paign against Gramm. Caperton ad
mitted that he did not support Dog
gett in the past, but believes that he
is the man we need to defeat
Gramm. He is now in the process of
forming a steering committee for
Doggett’s campaign.
He also stressed Doggett’s support
of the Pell Grant and grants to stu
dents who want to go to college.
Caperton questioned the Republi
can policies of both Gramm and
President Reagan, and told students
to ask themselves “are we any better
off today than we were four years
ago?” His answer is yes, only if you
are one of the rich.
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Jesuit priest talks
on writing’s history
By ANN CERVENKA
Reporter
A Jesuit priest who has ap
peared in the Middle East, Eu
rope, South America, Asia and
Africa said at a lecture series
Thursday night that writing was
once an intrusion into the world
just as computers are today.
Walter J. Ong, S.J., professor
of humanities and English at
Saint Louis University, was the
first speaker for the President’s
Lecture Series at Rudder Tower.
Plato and Socrates found four
problems with writing, he said.
For example, writing is inhuman,
something to be manipulated.
Like the computer, writing was
something foreign to many peo
ple, he said.
Also, he said, writing is unres
ponsive. A text cannot explain,
just as a computer cannot think.
Untruths in a book “contaminate
the thought stream forever,” Ong
said. “That’s why books have
been burned.”
Plato and Socrates found that
writing destroys the memory and
weakens the mind as calculators
do today, he said.
“With a pocket calculator, you
simply do not need to know the
times tables,” he said.
Finally, the two Greek philo
sophers thought that the written
word cannot defend itself as the
actual spoken word can, Ong
said.
Writing is the “most momen
tous of all human inventions,”
Ong said. Throughout the his
tory of man, illiteracy has been
widespread. In fact, almost all of
our ancestors have been illiterate.
The oldest known language, cu
neiform, is only about 6,000 years
old and the alphabet is only about
4,000 years old.
Therefore, oral cultures have
been very important throughout
history. Of the 4,000 languages in
the world today, “only about 78
have a literature,” Ong said.
“Only the tiniest fraction of lan
guage has ever been written at all
or will ever be written.”
Although writing is an essential
technological advancement in our
society, “once reduced to space,
words are frozen or in effect
dead,” Ong said. A book is not
even a text unless someone reads
it, he said.
Oral words are personally in
teractive and warm while written
words are abstract and immobile,
he said. Oral words are more
complete than written words be
cause they must use intonation,
or emphasis, of voice.
Different readers interpreting
aloud can use the same words in
various ways, depending on the
meaning desired, he said.
Because writing does not have
the immediacy of speech, the
meaning can change with time.
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