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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 9, 1987)
Wednesday, September 9, 1987/The Battalion/Page 3 State and Local ^language department teaches Chinese, Italian ngi i\i ew courses help meet increasing language demand By Cindy Milton Staff Writer IIsLong with the growth of the )pened upina Texas A&M student body comes an tked all of us as .expansion of the modern language rmac. department in the College of Liberal Arts 1 the making-a- Chinese and Italian are two new ig lin thistimt c °orses taught at A&M this fall k and fishingr. w w h . ^help satisfy an ever-in- , f s creasing demand for language ty-on hag lull courses sa j c j jj r j u j s Costa, head of gate agent he:; the modern language department, the guys in the:' “T he languages do something good laughaf'that other studies don’t,’’ Costa said, ed girl minglestudying a language, students i . i „ °, can get a different interpretation of hingrodoBiofe .r 6 , r • , self. Languages are an essential part of fnodern education because they reflect dif ferent values and lead to a uston tfitech . better understanding of the world.” lad my luggage: Students of all majors express an hadn’t melted interest in modern languages be cause they feel knowledge of dif fer ent languages will help them with s about all you their careers, Costa said, on able Danger el has become “The languages are important in business and every other endeavor in the modern world,” he said. “The United States no longer is the mar ket for everything — we’re becom ing internationalized.” New this fall are courses in Chinese and Italian. Initially, only one section of each course was to be offered, but the classes filled imme diately, Costa said. As a result, an ad ditional section has been opened in the Chinese class and future devel opment will include follow-up and cultural courses in both languages, he said. Dr. Xiao-nan Shen and Dr. Van Kelly, both new to the University, expect the courses to expand within the next year. Shen, who is teaching two sections of beginning Chinese and a Chinese culture class, came to the United States from China in 1981 to pursue “By studying a language, students can get a different interpretation of self Languages are an essential part of modern education because they reflect different va lues and lead to a better understanding of the world. ” — Dr. Luis Costa, head of the modern languages department her Ph.D in French at the University of California at Berkeley. She re cently accepted a position here to teach both French and Chinese. Joy Lou, a senior marketing major currently taking one of Shen’s begin ning classes, expressed her interest in the class: “I’m really excited. We’ve already learned so much, and we’ve only been in the class for a week.” Lou became interested in the class because she is Chinese and she wanted to learn the language of her mother country. Hui-jen Shiau, another of Shen’s students, feels the language will help him with his future career. “I plan to go into Air Force Intelligence,” he said, “and knowing Chinese may be important in the next century. The United States has great political and economical weight in China.” Kelly, originally from Dallas, also is new at A&M. He became inter ested in Italian when he took a be ginning Italian course during his freshman year at Vanderbilt Univer sity. Since then, Kelly has earned his Ph.D in French literature with a mi nor in Italian. He recently taught French and Italian for two years at the University of Iowa. Saralyn Flores, a senior modern languages major from Killeen, is es pecially interested in the Italian course. “I’m well-specialized in the romance languages,” Flores said. “I heard from another professor that Dr. Kelly was a really good teacher and I’m very impressed with the way that he teaches. “He’s animated. He makes you speak with your hands, just like an Italian would.” Kelly, who has been to Italy seve ral times, said many of his students became interested in the language because they have been to Italy and want to learn more about the lan guage. But one of his students, Keith Wilkinson, a sophomore physics ma jor from Corpus Christi, has other motives for taking the course. “I’m half Italian,” he said, “and I’Ve always been interested in learn ing how to speak the language.” The modern language depart ment plans to keep adding to its al ready long list of courses, Costa said. “Right now we offer Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Russian and Spanish,” he said. “The next language to come aboard will bejapanese.” Portuguese also may be added within the next few years, he said. “Eventually we hope that we can create more language majors, but the process takes a while to come about,” Costa said. “Right now we’re simply offering courses and seeing if there is an interest. nior joumalm lion page edit 557 HCVSfOH fWf fraternity pledge’s death, hazing law increase caution at UT, officials say AUSTIN (AP) — The drinking death of a Uni versity of Texas fraternity pledge last autumn and stronger penalties in a new anti-hazing law have increased caution about group activities, UT students and officials said. Mobile not claiming that problems of hazing and alcohol abuse have been eliminated, many say students have more information about the dangers of those activities and that they are aware of the legalities of hazing, which leads offi cials to believe that the new hazing law will be a deterrent. HAt this point there is a heightened awareness | ofjiabilities as far as penalties go,” said Glenn I Maloney, an assistant dean of students who works with student organizations. I Maloney and Scott Wilder, director of the In- I terfraternity Council, plan a meeting to discuss the new hazing law and related issues with the presidents and pledge trainers of the 29 fraterni ties that belong to the council. Maloney said he hopes the meeting will pro vide an opportunity for him to listen to concerns of the fraternity leaders and encourage closer co operation between the university and the student groups on problems such as alcohol abuse. Wilder said the meeting will be a good way to impress on fraternities the seriousness of the hazing law. “Once they see it down on paper and see it has very serious penalties, then I think it will be a de terrent,” Wilder said. Until the Legislature revised the law this year, hazing carried a maximum penalty of a $250 fine and 90 days in jail. Now anyone convicted of hazing will face a minimum penalty of a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. An incident that results in death would carry a fine of $5,000 to $10,000 and a jail sentence of one to two years. An organization found guilty of hazing will face fines of $5,000 to $10,000, and people who fail to report a hazing incident to-au thorities also could be prosecuted. Revision of the law was partly a response to the death last September of Mark Seeberger, a UT freshman who was a Phi Kappa Psi pledge when he died of alcohol poisoning. A Travis County grand jury declined to indict anyone in the death, but UT officials disciplined several students who were involved in the inci dent and suspended the fraternity from campus activities for at least four years. The Seeberger case and the memory of a 1985 hazing incident in which at least nine UT frater nity pledges were hospitalized after being kept awake for days and pelted with rotten eggs “have had a profound effect on students,” Wilder said. “As far as forced consumption of alcohol goes or sleep deprivation, I would be almost certain that something like that is not going to happen again at fraternities at this campus,” Wilder said. Increased pressure against hazing also is com ing throughout the country from alumni of fra ternities and the national fraternity organiza tions, Maloney said. “There is a awareness among alumni a growing about their liability,” he said. “They are seeing that they can be sued for what a fraternity does.” Labor Day weekend continues Texas trend of fewer traffic deaths (AP) — The 26 traffic-related fatalities over the Labor Day holi day weekend, far fewer than the 42 predicted, continues a recent decline in state roadway deaths, the Deparment of Public Safety said Tuesday. “We’re very hopeful this is a tradition that is starting in Texas,” DPS spokesman David Wells said. He cited the safety belt law and increased awareness of drunken driving as contributing to the de cline. The number of roadway deaths was the lowest since 1975, when 27 deaths were reported. In 1980, 29 people died on Texas roadways, Wells said. He added that the DPS began keeping the traffic count in 1970. “One factor that I think brought about the lower number was that there was not a single ac cident that caused more than one death,” Wells said. Five people were killed in acci dents involving pedestrians, two in head-on crashes, three in two- vehicle broadsides, two in rear- end collisions, two in multi-car ac cidents and two in accidents in volving bicycles, he said. The DPS counting period be gan at 6 p.m. Friday and ended at midnight Monday. The toll pre dicted this year was slightly lower than the 48 deaths predicted for the holiday period in 1986. ■ Battalion's ppear and » so that we can active. ttal ion's is sponsoring ould mention Jolt Cola to all e party. attalion. Thais I are very hacLj >e severely ipset with us. becking on its situation was by the most lisorganizatio»i| rganization, ure you that ill r, I do expect stitution. You rify that advent r.s.sional staff j run news orf . 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