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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 16, 1988)
Page 2/The Battalion/Thursday, June 16, 1988 Opinion Prof. Sherrill could be off to bigger thing Two of the top ics I covered last semester as a Bat talion staff writer were the search for a new presi dent and the ap pointment of Ath- letic Director Jackie Sherrill as a professor of ath letics with tenure. When searching ■ for a topic for my Professor Sherrill could teach Fi nance 921 — 101 Ways to Ask Alumni for Money. A must for any college stu dent who wishes to fund a proper col lege education. Richard Williams column I realized Sherrill had given me the best topic of all — why not make Jackie actually teach a class? Jackie could teach any of several classes at Texas A&M that would draw on his expertise in one of several subject areas. The First, and most obvious, choice is to have the professor teach a class in finance. How about Finance 839 — How to survive in college with only two Audis to drive. This class would be important for any unfortunate student who had to suffer through this terrible hardship. Accounting 832 — Accounting for the College Athlete. Since a college ath lete must pay taxes for things like room and board, scholarships, kickbacks (only if the kickback is discovered), car allow ances and summer jobs for printing companies this class would be an excel lent class for Professor Jackie to teach. (I would suggest that Jackie and Kevin Murray co-teach this class.) Jackie could teach classes in ethics; however Pm not sure what classes would best suit his definition of ethics. Professor Sherrill could teach a class in media relations. As Athletic Director, Jackie has been more than willing to open the door to the public. His relation with the media is outstanding. An example. At Texas Christian Uni versity the Athletic Department re leased only the information that was re quested by the media. Press conferences were held and the the coach, Jim Wacker, even talked with most of the media outside an official press confer ence. Imagine the inconvienence Wacker put the reporters through. The poor reporters had to call Wacker con stantly. Jackie was better to the reporters. He held infrequent press conferences that allowed the media to spend time with other stories. Jackie also was almost un available to the press outside of the press conferences. This meant the re porters did not have to worry about call ing him and having to add more to a story. Awful nice of him to spare the re porters of this extra work. The professor also released more in formation to the press than they wanted. He was nice enough to release a report that included fire escape plans and dormitory layout. Jackie could also teach Media Rela tions 666 — Ten Ways to Say No Com ment and The Social Importance of Such a Statement. If we can’t allow Sherrill to teach a class then we should do an even braver thing. Make tenured Professor/Athletic Director/Head Coach Jackie Sherrill the next president of A&M. Why? I’m surprised anyone could doubt the ability of Sherrill to lead this fine University to the point where our faculty could beat the hell out of any faculty in the country. fere with the much needed roads, cause of this Sherrill could simply the buildings and hold classesoutsidt! besides making the campus lessd tered with buildings, the new ro; could be used to honor athletes; )espite Sov Sherrill would also be able to make all athletes at A&M full professors. Since the new professors would be paid by the University no one would have to worry about finding alumni to pay them to play. This would also make tax returns easier for the players to file. As president, Jackie would probably build more parking spaces on campus to handle the overflow of new cars that the athletes/professors would be able pur chase. Traffic on campus would in crease, and President Jackie would find creating new roads a must. A slight problem could occur when the academic buildings on campus inter alumni. We could have Sherrill stu( j Corrington Court, Roper Road, Pjiiublication Parkway (in case Pavlas falls outofljibt signific; we could have Bucky Boulevard or econom y ° good Overpass) or Livingstone Lane Sherrill could also probably ap&tconomic s athletes to various positions of ramiBdis, Con importance. Ouy Broom could bt« nt ^ ea *‘. 1 pointed legal counsel for A&M,1 Murray could be placed in char^ffiy ie j>i en transportation and Chet Brooks ci miuee of th be in charge of all speech writing. pAnita vai u | ... ,, pen. .His v 1 lowever, as president, Shernlhi |f| Kt Uni< probably find a way to replace theeaMyiet Uni\ of The Butt, and I would be out of a rience.” Th Maybe this is isn’t such a good plan; hug's expt ,11 Leni 19b > Richard Williams is a senior agTifti|kinm, a ral journalism major and editoro/l|arL. a sei Battalion. pd •- .!•. piet econ Why don’t we abolish our worthless ELI program? ey comp sis to creat coul In the past, a number of faculty members have spoken against the Mahinda English Language Karunaratne Institute (ELI). However, not many students Guest Columnist have come forward to discuss their ex perience as ELI students. As a victim of ELI last spring I intend to discuss my experience with this letter. This interview was one of the most absurd and unfair things I had ever .seen in the ELI system. If they are to do a reasonable evaluation, I believe that a student must be interviewed for at least the scheduled ten minute time, and all three interviewers should ask questions giving the student time to adjust for the interview and answer without tension. Soviet e min sai eorgam chieve r For hir After graduating from Southern Methodist University (SMU) with an MS in Statistics, I decided to transfer to A&M because my wife wanted to join the entomology department. Even though I was informed that I was re quired to take the English Language Proficiency examination (ELP) and made satisfactory performance, I was never given a clear format of the test. Neither was I given a definition for sat isfactory performance. Nevertheless, it was my belief that I shouldn’t have a problem in doing well, as English was not a barrier against me at SMU; how ever, to my dismay, I “performed satis factorily” only in two sections of the ELP exam. The compostion section is another di saster. The topic of my Fu st composition was whether the development of indi vidual minds or whole society matters more. It is for the reader to understand how difficult it would be for a student like me who has done only mathematics and statistics for more than ten years to iVASHI ved W< kage f< as, incl cement 1.85 mil pus Ch H‘This bi! -sized Brooke Ar sen, D-Te> ■versy ov write a composition on such a topic without any prior preparation. When I took the EPL exam the second time at the end of the semester, the topic of the composition was whether time or money matters more. It is hard to understand how a composition written on such a topic would ever show the writing skill required by a graduate student. Two sections (vocabulary and compo sition) were postponed, and I was re quired to take ELI courses in oral skills and grammar. I was so depressed and disappointed that I called my former advisor in SMU and told him that I al ready regretted transferring to A&M and felt like going back to SMU. He said I was welcome if I was really interested in coming back. As a second thought, considering the fact that my wife was new to America, I decided to stay here and go through the hassle. We never got our grades from the first test in our grammar class. When we asked for it, we were informed that it was only for the information of ELL As far as I know, in the past some students were exempted from taking the course depending on the grades of such a test. I presume that the refusal of giving the grades was due to doubt of being of forced to exempt students and hence losing money. However, it is against uni versity regulations to withhold releasing results of any test. Qvi&sd would be happy to be helped in their English proficiency. Instead of solving the problem, ELI creates a worse situa tion. Tuition charged by ELI is unbelie vably high. For instance, the cost of the two ELI courses and the three regular courses was $555 and $350 respectively. In the ELP exam, oral skill of a stu dent is evaluated by means of an inter view held by a panel of three people who do not have any concern what soever with the student’s major. The materials covered in grammer class were only a review of simple gram mar I learned about fifteen years ago, and I could have done the same thing by simply buying any grammar book for a couple of dollars. In my case only one person out of three interviewed me. The interview didn’t last for more that three minutes and it was miraculously concluded that I was required to take and ELI course in Oral Skills to improve my English speaking ability to facilitate learning and teaching Statistics. Oral skills class was nothing but a waste. The instructor spent many of the class periods simply gossiping and looking at his wrist watch at regular in tervals. Such a nature was understand able considering that there was nothing much he could teach us about oral skill. The best way of acquiring such a knowl edge is usual day-to-day communica tion. I ended up paying the savings I had kept to send to my old parents who are going through a tough financial time. $555 approximately amounts to eight month salary of my occupation as an as sistant lecturer back in my country, Sri Lanka. Hence it is quite natural for pro spective student from Sri Lanka to choose any other school over A&M and avoid taking a risk. Several of my friends who asked me about the school have already done so. Even though a score of 550 in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL is the required standard for many higher educational institutions). Here, a graduate student with such a score has a very high possibility of being forced to take ELI courses, while he wouldn’t have such a problem if he at tended any other university. According to the brochure provided by the Inter national Student Advisor, a student with a TOEFL score of 500-549 has a 65 per cent chance of being required to take three to five ELI courses, and a student with a TOEFL score of 550-599 has a 75 percent chance of being required to take one or two ELI courses. encouraging the letter I received fn SMU was. Almost all students who happen take ELI courses end up with was time and money. I have yet to met single student who said that he ors gained anything worthwhile out of 1 courses. Many foreign students befe that the English Department couldb viable alternative for this problem. The majority of foreign students Another disastrous feature of the ELP exam is that it is offered at the be ginning of the semester when students are exhausted by long travels from their countries, looking for a place to live and trying to get adjusted to America. Apart from all these, the conditions concerning ELI mentioned in the letter of acceptance is so compelling that a stu dent who receives this letter from the office of admissions would never expe rience the happy feeling of gaining ad mission to a university. I felt this differ ence very well since I remembered how While foreign students have continuing to go through this han for a long time, it is a shame that who are responsible have not been to take necessary steps towardsadi ble solution so far. Although I tendi talk about my own personal expei in this letter, 1 am sure that this is experience of many foreign stud? who took ELI courses, and that! woidd agree with Biochemistry prol j sor Ry Young’s suggestion of ton abolishing ELL Mahinda Karunaratne is a static graduate student Buy are pizza ictei The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Richard Williams, Editor Sue Krenek, Managing Editor Mark Nair, Opinion Page Editor Curtis Culberson, City Editor Becky Weisenfels, Cindy Milton, News Editors Anthony Wilson, Sports Editor Jay Janner, Art Director Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the author, and do not necessarily rep resent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, fac ulty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. Mail subscriptions are $17.44 per semester, $34.62 per school year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on request. Our address: The Battalion, 230 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-1 111. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battal ion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, Col lege Station TX 77843-4111. BLOOM COUNTY by Berke Breathfl a™